Cease to do evil, and learn to do well

“[The Church] is under the law to cease to do evil, and learn to do well. She must seek justice and relieve the oppressed. In a word, she must abolish slavery, or be abolished by slavery. The voice of one crying in the wilderness has the same lesson today as in the days of Jesus. The axe is laid at the root of the tree. Usefulness is the price of existence. Do or die, wear out or rust out, bring forth fruit or be cut down, is the law now and always. Men may go often, but they will not go always to an exhausted fountain; they will not long search for substance where they are only rewarded with shadows. If they do not find God and his eternal attributes among the solemn splendors of the Church, they will turn away from its altars and aisles, and go forth into the temple of God’s creation, and strive to interpret for themselves the heavenly inscriptions of divine love.”

—Frederick Douglass, lecture before the Rochester Ladies’ Anti-Slavery Society, 1855