Go Tell It on the Mountain

by James Baldwin

Then the darkness began to murmur—a terrible sound—and John’s ears trembled. In this murmur that filled the grave, like a thousand wings beating on the air, he recognized a sound that he had always heard. He began, for terror, to weep and moan—and this sound was swallowed up, and yet was magnified by the echoes that filled the darkness. This sound had filled John’s life, so it now seemed, from the moment he had first drawn breath. He had heard it everywhere, in prayer and in daily speech, and wherever the saints were gathered, and in the unbelieving streets. It was in his father’s anger, and in his mother’s calm insistence, and in the vehement mockery of his aunt; it had rung, so oddly, in Roy’s voice this afternoon, and when Elisha played the piano it was there; it was in the beat and jangle of Sister McCandless’s tambourine, it was in the very cadence of her testimony, and invested that testimony with a matchless, unimpeachable authority. Yes, he had heard it all his life, but it was only now that his ears were opened to this sound that came from darkness, that could only come from darkness, that yet bore such sure witness to the glory of the light. And now