Frederick Douglass

I love that religion that makes it the duty of its disciples to visit the father less and the widow in their affliction.

It was not merely the agency of Master Thomas, in breaking up and destroying my Sabbath school, that shook my confidence in the power of southern religion to make men wiser or better; but I saw in him all the cruelty and meanness, after…

I love that religion that sends its votaries to bind up the wounds of him that has fallen among thieves.

I love that religion that comes from above, in the “wisdom of God,” which is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, and easy to be entreated, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality and without hypocrisy.

The reader will not be surprised when I say, that the breaking up of my Sabbath school, by these class-leaders, and professedly holy men, did not serve to strengthen my religious convictions.

Men do not love those who remind them of their sins unless they have a mind to repent—and the mulatto child’s face is a standing accusation against him who is master and father to the child.

This I conceive to be the darkest feature of slavery, and the most difficult to attack, because it is identified with religion, and exposes those who denounce it to the charge of infidelity.

Whips, chains, gags, and thumb-screws have all lain under the droppings of the sanctuary, and instead of rusting from off the limbs of the bondman, those droppings have served to preserve them in all their strength.

I could not go to Baltimore, but I could make a little Baltimore here.

Ministers of religion come forward and torture the hallowed pages of inspired wisdom to sanction the bloody deed.

Yes, the pulpit there stands up as the great defender of this cursed institution, as it is called.

Here, thought I, is something worth living for; here is an excellent chance for usefulness; and I shall soon have a company of young friends, lovers of knowledge, like some of my Baltimore friends, from whom I now felt parted forever.