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Frederick Douglass, the Orator - Monroe County Library System

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Central <strong>Library</strong> of Rochester and <strong>Monroe</strong> <strong>County</strong> · Historic Monographs Collection<br />

228 LIFE OF FREDERICK DOUGLASS.<br />

<strong>Frederick</strong> <strong>Douglass</strong> as a churchman. What I<br />

shall say briefly upon this subject will be what I<br />

have been told by Mr. <strong>Douglass</strong> himself.<br />

I first met Mr. <strong>Douglass</strong> at <strong>the</strong> home of my<br />

fa<strong>the</strong>r, in New Bedford, Mass., in 1862; since<br />

which time I have known him well. The<br />

Washington Post, Thursday, February 21, said:<br />

" Freedom to Mr. <strong>Douglass</strong> meant not only freedom<br />

of <strong>the</strong> person. He believed in and was a<br />

brilliant champion for <strong>the</strong> vast liberty of <strong>the</strong><br />

soul." But let no young man or person, in<br />

skepticism and love of sin, by this fact be<br />

deceived and led astray from light and from<br />

truth, following Mr. <strong>Douglass</strong>' example.<br />

Reflect that <strong>the</strong> liberty of <strong>the</strong> soul, which Mr.<br />

<strong>Douglass</strong> sought, was not license, but spiritual<br />

liberty in a broader sense than he conceived it to<br />

be-in <strong>the</strong> American Church. <strong>Frederick</strong> <strong>Douglass</strong><br />

was a converted man.<br />

I heard him last summer tell <strong>the</strong> Methodist<br />

Conference in Georgetown, to which he was<br />

invited by Bishop Hurst: "I remember <strong>the</strong><br />

time when I bowed at <strong>the</strong> altar in a little<br />

Methodist church that I now own, on Fell's<br />

Point, Baltimore; <strong>the</strong>n and <strong>the</strong>re I caught a<br />

stream of light and I have followed that light<br />

ever since!"<br />

Mr. <strong>Douglass</strong> broke with <strong>the</strong> American Church<br />

and with American Christian dogma when be

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