The North Star (Rochester)/1848/01/14/The Meeting on Main Street
THE MEETING ON MAIN STREET.
In the meeting house of the Wesleyan Methodists, on Main street, where amid the many popular and large pro-slavery congregations of this city, a small band of men and women meet to hear the Gospel of Freedom and Love for all, an Anti-Slavery lecture was given by Frederick Douglass, last Sunday afternoon. After prayer by Mr. Benson, the clergyman of the society, and the singing of an anti-slavery hymn (which by the way are rarely to be found in hymn books used in public worship,) Mr. Douglass spoke for an hour or more to a respectable audience who had come together notwithstanding the severity of the storm.—He dwelt for some time on the nature of real Christianity, showing to be a world-wide faith-recognising all as brethren, raising up the degraded, freeing the slave, and strengthening the weak. Toward the conlusion of his remarks, he spoke in a feeling manner, which drew tears from many eyes, of the cruel prejudice against his race, and gave a simple narrative of some of his own experience of good and ill treatment as a colored man. The ad,dress was given in a familiar manner; the speaker saying that he felt more like talking with those present, than making a speech to them, and apparently produced a happy effect on the listeners. His sentiments were warmly responded to by the minister and a number of the members of the society; and it was cheering to see and feel that amid the prejudice which drives the colored man to the negro pew in so many churches in this city, and the stern bigotry which cries "Infidel" against those who ask that God's truth shall free the black man as well as the white man, and make all brethren, here was a different spirit—on oasis in the desert. S.