Go Tell It on the Mountain

by James Baldwin

For many years the Lord had pressed Sister McCandless to get up, as she said, and move; but she had been of timid disposition and feared to set herself above others. Not until He laid her low, before this very altar, had she dared to rise and preach the gospel.

The Lord was riding on the wind tonight.

Around her she heard the saints’ voices, a steady, charged murmur, with now and again the name of Jesus rising above, sometimes like the swift rising of a bird into the air of a sunny day, sometimes like the slow rising of the mist from swamp ground.

But Florence remembered one phrase, which now she muttered against the knuckles that bruised her lips: “Lord, help my unbelief.”

I ain’t nothing but a poor, weak vessel in the hands of the Lord.”

looked up into his face. And looking into his face, which burned—in the dim, yellow light that hung about them there—like the face of a man who has wrestled with angels and demons and looked on the face of God, it

Of tears there was, yes, a very fountain—springing from a depth never sounded before, from depths John had not known were in him. And he wanted to rise up, singing, singing in that great morning, the morning of his new life.

Ah, how his tears ran down, how they blessed his soul!—as he felt himself, out of the darkness, and the fire, and the terrors of death, rising upward to meet the saints.