Go tell it on the mountain - James Baldwin [50]
‘Praise Him!’ cried Deborah, and he had never heard her voice so loud.
‘Woe is me, for when God struck the sinner, the sinner’s eyes were opened, and he saw himself in all his foulness naked before God’s glory. Woe is me! For the moment of salvation is a blinding light, cracking down into the heart from Heaven—Heaven so high, and the sinner so low. Woe is me! For unless God raised the sinner, he would never rise again!’
‘Yes, Lord! I was there!’
How many here to-night had fallen where Isaiah fell? How many had cried—as Isaiah cried? How many could testify, as Isaiah testified, ‘Mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts’? Ah, whosoever failed to have this testimony should see His face, but should be told, on that great day: ‘Depart from me, ye that work iniquity,’ and be hurled for ever into the lake of fire prepared for Satan and all his angels. Oh, would the sinner rise to-night, and walk the little mile to his salvation, here to the mercy seat?
And he waited. Deborah watched him with a calm, strong smile. He looked out over their faces, their faces all upturned to him. He saw joy in those faces, and holy excitement, and belief—and they all looked up to him. Then, far in the back, a boy rose, a tall, dark boy, his white shirt open at the neck and torn, his trousers dusty and shabby and held up with an old necktie, and he looked across the immeasurable, dreadful, breathing distance up to Gabriel, and began to walk down the long, bright aisle. Someone cried: ‘Oh, bless the Lord!’ and tears filled Gabriel’s eyes. The boy knelt, sobbing, at the mercy seat, and the church began to sing.
Then Gabriel turned away, knowing that this night he had run well, and that God had used him. The elders all were smiling, and one of them took him by the hand, and said: ‘That was mighty fine, boy. Mighty fine.’
Then came the Sunday of the spectacular dinner that was to end the revival—for which dinner, Deborah and all the other women, had baked, roasted, fried, and boiled for many days beforehand. He jokingly suggested to repay her a little for her contention that he was the best preacher of the revival, that she was the best cook among the women. She timidly suggested that he was here at a flattering disadvantage, for she had heard all of the preachers, but he had not, for a very long time, eaten another woman’s cooking.
When the Sunday came, and he found himself once more among the elders, about to go to the table, Gabriel felt a drop in his happy, proud anticipation. He was not comfortable with these men—that was it—it was difficult for him to accept them as his elders and betters in the faith. They seemed to him so lax, so nearly worldly; they were not like those holy prophets of old who grew thin and naked in the service of the Lord. These, God’s ministers, had indeed grown fat, and their dress was rich and various. They had been in the field so long that they did not tremble before God any more. They took God’s power as their due, as something that made the more exciting their own assured, special atmosphere. They each had, it seemed, a bagful of sermons often preached with great authority, and brought souls low before the altar—like so many ears of corn lopped off by the hired laborer in his daily work—they did not give God the glory, nor count it as glory at all; they might as easily have been, Gabriel thought, highly paid circus-performers, each with his own special dazzling gift. Gabriel discovered that they spoke, jokingly, of the comparative number of souls each of them had saved, as though they were keeping score in a pool-room. And this offended him and frightened him. He did not want, ever, to hold the gift of God so lightly.
They, the ministers, were being served alone in the upper room