Daniel A. Payne

Some good words for the church, the family, and parents of daughters in particular:

   There are also your daughters. They ought to be the objects of your special regard. To educate them in such a manner as to render them fit to do Christian work is the highest duty of the church herself. She can perform none higher, none more beneficial for the community. And whenever a young woman of talents and piety is found, who has aptness for teaching and who is desirous to qualify herself thoroughly for such a work but has not the means to meet the expenses, this church ought to undertake to educate her. Perhaps there is no greater power in a given community than that of educated women. I use the term in its broadest, highest sense, by which I do not mean a smattering, or even excellence in music, instrumental and vocal, in drawing and painting; nor do I mean a mere classical or scientific and mathematical training. But I do mean a Christian education, that which draws our head and heart toward the Cross, and after consecrating them to the cross sends the individuals from beneath the cross with the spirit of him who died upon it, sending them abroad well fitted for Christian usefulness, a moral, a spiritual power, molding and coloring the community, and preparing it for a nobler and higher state of existence in that world where change never comes, unless it be a change from the good to the better and from the better to the best.
   The past, the dark past is gone—I hope forever gone. It was a time when ignorance sat in high places and ruled, when vice was as respected as virtue. The present and the future demands a different spirit and different conduct. The almighty fiat has gone forth. “Many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased” (Dan. 12:4). Hence the future demands educated women in order that there may be educated wives, and consequently educated mothers who will give to the race a training entirely and essentially different from the past. In other words, the future demands wives and mothers who will, like Susannah Wesley, convert the homestead into a schoolhouse, and that schoolhouse into the church where young immortals shall be trained for their heavenward flight. The wants of the race demand such women to descend into the South as educators, to assist in correcting the religious errors of the freedmen and to bridle their wild enthusiasm. These religious errors, the wild enthusiasm of the freedmen, are results of the slavery that had been operating on them and their forefathers for nearly 250 years and cannot be removed in a day, nor by one man, nor by one kind of human agency. The Deity does not operate upon humanity in that fashion. He applies a multitude of instrumentalities and different agencies to civilize and Christianize a race. But of these none are more potent than the educated wife, the educated mother, the educated school-mistress, but educated under the Cross and in the spirit of him who died upon the cross.

—Daniel A. Payne, cited in Thabiti Anyabwile, The Faithful Preacher: Recapturing the Vision of Three Pioneering African-American Pastors (Crossway, 2007), 109–110.

From the “Nothing New under the Sun” file comes this quote by Bishop Daniel A. Payne, from a sermon preached in 1859.

   The moral character of the minister of Jesus, then must be so elevated that he will be an example to believers:
   a. In his words. This has reference to both his speech inside the pulpit and outside of it. No foolishness, no arrogant sayings, no ludicrous antidotes, no filthy comparisons, no vulgarity, no obscene epithets, no blasphemous expressions should ever come from his lips—darkening, confusing, disgracing the text he has undertaken to expound. The doctrine, the pure doctrine—the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth—should ever be his utterances, both inside the pulpit and outside of it. In the sanctuary and in the parlor, the lips of the righteous man must speak wisdom, and his tongue must talk of judgment, so that every word and all his words shall be “like apple of gold in pictures of silver” (Prov. 25:11).
   The moral character of the minister of Jesus must be elevated, so he will be an example of the believer.
   b. In conversation, i.e., in conduct. Oh, how careful we should walk before God and man! Rudeness in behavior disgraces the minister’s character, for it lowers the dignity of the Christian ministry. So does buffoonery, especially pulpit buffoonery, in which some men seem to pride themselves. I have seen such men whom people fond of fun would just as soon pay twenty-five cents to hear as see a clown perform in the circus.

—Daniel A. Payne, cited in Thabiti Anyabwile, The Faithful Preacher: Recapturing the Vision of Three Pioneering African-American Pastors (Crossway, 2007), 92.

A very short answer to a very important question:

. . . who is sufficient to preach the gospel of Christ and govern the church that he has purchased with his own blood? Who is sufficient to train his host of the Lord and to lead it from earth to heaven? Who is sufficient to guide it through this war against principalities and powers, against spiritual wickedness in high places, against all the hosts of earth and hell, and place it triumphant upon the shining plains of glory? Who is sufficient? I answer, the man who makes Christ the model of his own Christian and ministerial character. This man, and he alone, is sufficient for these things.

—Daniel A. Payne, cited in Thabiti Anyabwile, The Faithful Preacher: Recapturing the Vision of Three Pioneering African-American Pastors (Crossway, 2007), 88–89.

Bishop Daniel Alexander Payne (1811–1893) was a free black, born in Charleston, South Carolina during the height of slavery. He joined the African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME) in 1841, and in 1852 was, against his wishes, elected bishop of the New England Conference. His passion was for an educated church, beginning with the man in the pulpit. Thabiti Anyabwile writes, “In [Payne’s] view, an undereducated and ill-prepared minister was a scandal and affliction upon black churches.” (The Faithful Preacher, Part Two, Bishop Daniel A. Payne: A Vision for an Educated Pastorate)

   At the General conference of 1852, Daniel Payne received from Bishop Morris Brown a last-minute request to provide the opening address. Payne proved “instant in season, out of season” (2 Tim. 4:2) as he selected 2 Corinthians 2:16 and the theme “Who is Sufficient for These Things?” perhaps the text indicated Payne’s four-year-long resistance to and fear of being chosen as a bishop, but it also provided a short outline for a preacher’s calling as Payne saw it. First the preacher is to preach the gospel. That vocation did not consist of “loud declamation or vociferous talking” or “whooping, stamping and beating the Bible and the desk” or seeing who “halooes the loudest and speaks the longest.” Preaching the gospel, according to Payne, required acquainting man with the holy God of heaven, with man’s just condemnation, with his need for the savior, and with the necessity of repentance and faith. Second, a faithful minister cultivates maturity in the flock and thereby “train[s] them for usefulness and for heaven.” Third, a good pastor disciplines and governs the church. This difficult duty requires the pastor “to make his flock intimately acquainted with the doctrines of the Christian Church, instruct them in the principles of Church government, reprove them for negligence and sin, admonish them of their duties and obligations, and then try and expel the obstinate, so as to keep the Church as pure as human wisdom, diligence and zeal, under divine guidance, can make it.”
   Payne could rightly ask along with the apostle Paul, “who is sufficient for these things?” These tasks—preaching the gospel, cultivating Christian maturity in the congregation, and exercising biblical church discipline—were only possible by fusing an educated mind with true Christian experience and piety while depending wholly on the sufficiency of God. The one who is sufficient for the life and work of the ministry is the one who “lives the life of faith and prayer” and who seeks to fill “his head [with] all knowledge and his heart with all holiness” in pursuit of his Lord.

—Thabiti Anyabwile, The Faithful Preacher: Recapturing the Vision of Three Pioneering African-American Pastors (Crossway, 2007), 81–82.