The first time I came across Brother Joseph Baumann's name was in Ligon's Portraiture of Gospel Preachers (1899). Here was the picture of a German with a moustache similar to the one my grandfather Grün had sported. The two "nn" in Baumann's name made me suspect that he was a German immigrant of the first generation. And yet, I had never heard of him elsewhere. Why then did David S. Ligon include him in his gallery of gospel preachers, I wondered. After some welcome but sparse hints on Stone-Campbell, our Internet discussion group, I almost resigned myself to the fact that I would never know more about this fellow German. Maybe he was a preacher who had stumbled into Ligon's life and was memorialized not so much for his deserved accomplishments as for having come close at an opportune time to the man who gave us the poster boys of fin-de-siècle preaching, including himself. But a systematic search for articles by Robert Henry Boll, another German-American, provided some unexpected clues as to the type of person Brother Baumann was and why he deserved inclusion among the Victorian and Edwardian preacher heroes. As it turned out, it was not for his rhetorical prowess and finesse, but for his humble and exemplary Christian life.

In 1900, when Robert Henry Boll had finished his course as a student at the Nashville Bible School and was teaching German and French at his alma mater, long before he became the front-page editor of the Gospel Advocate, he already contributed articles to the journal. In the 28 June issue of that year he published a letter he had received from Brother Baumann from Germany, where Baumann was visiting relatives and wrote about his alienation from the Roman Catholic faith of his youth, a situation with which Boll, the ex-Catholic, was able to identify.

Brother Baumann writes as follows: "This is the Lord's day, and God only knows how I long to be with some one to commemorate the death and resurrection of my Savior. More than ever before I realize what it means to become 'all things to all men' and at the same time to be loyal to the church of God. My first teaching was by example. To drink, and having to ask for, water, when they would think more of you if you would drink beer or wine is not as easy as one might imagine. But Jesus gives us the sword of the Spirit: 'Take heed, . . . lest at any time your hearts be overcharged with surfeiting, and drunkenness.' (Luke 21: 34.) This morning, about an hour ago, came opportunity to use the sword. Yesterday my half-brother would have me go with him to what they call the 'mission' -- a kind of revival. I believe this is the first one I have heard of around here since 1868. I heard three priests (Roman Catholic) preach. The first one, on 'Stealing and Defrauding,' preached the word, excepting that he made a distinction between sins. The second, on 'Bridling the Tongue,' preached truth, but error when he came to 'false swearing.' He condemned it, but left off 'swear not at all.' The third priest had this theme: 'Jesus, . . . having loved his own, . . . he loved them until the end.' The perversion I cannot describe, yet I must become 'all things to all men, that I might. . . save some.' I complied with their wishes, and went and did, so far as I know, all I could consistently with God's truth. But doing nothing without a 'thus saith the Lord' is what provokes them to battle here. This morning my brother and his wife took me to task. First, they showed me mother's grave, and there, after talking of the beloved dead, asked me why I did not make the 'sign of the cross' and use 'holy water,' as mother taught. My answer was, in substance, that God or Jesus never said do it. Next, they asked: 'Do you pray for the dead?' I answered: 'No; God nowhere authorizes such.' Then: 'Do you pray the prayer? (Matt. 6: 9-13.) I answered: 'Yes; but never the Hail Mary after it.' I told them that I believed Mary was the best woman, perhaps, that ever lived, but prayer to her was not authorized. Next, they brought up the confessing of sins. I said to them: 'I confess my sins every day, and turn away from all evil, and pray for forgiveness.' Lastly, they spoke of the communion. A great many were going to what they called 'communion' on Saturday. I made my defense on this wise: (1) To show they communed on the wrong day I gave Acts 20: 7; (2) that 'they all [the Roman Catholics do not give the wine to the lay member] drank of it' I gave Mark 14: 23; (3) about transubstantiation I told them that Jesus said what he meant and meant what he said, and that I believed every word of holy writ. I said that I would be willing for any of their priests or bishops to meet me, also to take their own translations of the Scriptures. I am weak, but I can do all things through him that strengthens me. I need the prayers of all the saints. I write this in tears and in love to God and my countrymen."

Full well do I understand the enormity of the task Brother Baumann has undertaken; and this very letter shows that he is beset and pressed on every side. But, brethren, let us see the outcome. A man of faith has gone forth with the Bible alone, and as surely as God's word stands, the principalities and powers that oppose it shall come to naught.

Like Paul, with much sorrow and under a heavy burden our dear brother has written this. Lutheran, Catholic, and infidel -- every hand in that erring land is raised against him. Now he knows what it is to endure afflictions and to enter through much tribulation into the kingdom of God; and this will also be his salvation. His letter bears evidence that he is fleeing ever nearer to God, for there he has no friendly heart nor help in which he may trust. Let us pray for him that God, who is able to comfort, may strengthen and help him in his glorious work.

ROBERT H. BOLL.

Bible Student and Firm Foundation please copy.

There is a decade-long silence in my records about Joseph Baumann. When he surfaces again, in 1910, it is once more Robert Henry Boll who pleads his case. Boll was by then in his second year as front-page editor of the Gospel Advocate. On the front-page of the 21 April issue he supports a call by Brother Baumann for missionary work in their home country. Boll writes:

Germany's millions are in great part Roman Catholic; another great portion, Lutheran -- an institutional, national religion, which means a largely worthless one. There are hosts of infidels, freethinkers, rationalists, and their ranks are swelling daily; for the people are oppressed, and they have come to despise and hate the professional clergy, and the ferment of individualism working among the nations is working among them strongly, and they are casting off with scorn and contempt the shackles of traditionalism and human creeds which have held them in fear and bondage. And yet there is nothing sweeter and more beautiful than the spiritual nature of the German where it springs up in faith toward God. There is nothing more touching than the noble heart and high sentiment half concealed in the homely dialect of the humble German peasant. Unbounded possibilities there; but nothing short of the pure gospel, carried upon consecrated lips, backed by a heart filled with the Holy Spirit, can unlock those treasure rocks. Where are they? Our noble and beloved German brother, Joseph Baumann, makes an appeal in a letter to me for two volunteers -- preferably native Germans, one at least to be an educated man -- to go and work among that people, and out of his small means offers to give fifty dollars a year regularly to that work. "Who will go for me?" asks the Lord Jehovah.

The German missionary project did not materialize and would have required someone of Boll's capabilities and wider brotherhood support in order to succeed. Boll himself never went back to Germany after his initial arrival in the U.S. in 1895 at the age of 15. He continued, however, to support efforts by others to reach German immigrants in Ohio as well as half-hearted initiatives to missionize in his home country. He even had the multi-lingual Louis Patmont, a controversial Pole, translate his popular tract Why not be Just a Christian? into German and spoke in favor of Patmont's planned European missionary initiatives in the pages of Word and Work.

We hear of Baumann again after his death in October of 1912. There is a moving eulogy by E. H. Rogers, who had preached the funeral sermon in Childress, Texas. Baumann had been the first fruit of Rogers' Texan labors 26 years before. He writes:

On October 20, 1912, I was called to Childress, Texas, to attend the funeral of Brother Joseph Baumann. He was one of the most God-loving and self-sacrificing men that it was ever my privilege to know. In many respects he was one of the greatest men in the brotherhood. He was the first man that I took the confession from in the State of Texas, twenty-six years ago. At that time I could not understand half that he said. He was a German Catholic, thirty years old. Since that time he learned the English language and made himself a preacher of the gospel second to none in the State. He did as much good for the cause of Christ for the last fifteen years as any man in the State or the United States, and he did it all at his own expense. Besides the good done in Texas, he went as a missionary to Germany and preached the gospel to his own people. He also preached some in Colorado and North Mississippi. He not only did all of this grand work at his own expense, but was as liberal as any man to help others with his means. During all of' those years of faithful labor for the Lord he was surrounded by very trying circumstances, but bore it all without a murmur. When he came to die, it was his lot to have to die by inches. His death was expected daily for months before it came, but never did he murmur or complain, but admonished brethren and sisters who came daily to see him to serve the Lord with full purpose of heart. When I think over Brother Baumann's life and see how much good he did in such a short time and under such hard circumstances, I feel like I have done but little in this life. May God help all of us who knew him to follow his noble example.

E. H. ROGERS

The question I was still interested in was that of the relationship between Boll and Baumann. How and where had these two Germans met, and would we ever know anything specific about their friendship, since Baumann died relatively early in Boll's career as preacher? I found an answer once again in the Gospel Advocate, where Boll wrote an affectionate tribute to his old friend "Joe Baumann." Here we learn that their friendship went back to Nashville Bible School days in the 1890s, when both were involved as students in the city's prison ministry. In fact it had been Baumann who was present when Boll preached his first sermon ever at the Nashville city jail in 1896. We also hear about Baumann's great generosity and self-giving, and how it was through him that Boll had started his work in Texas, prior to becoming George Klingman's successor at Portland Ave. Church of Christ in Louisville, Kentucky, where he remained until his death in 1956. Boll writes about his friend:

In the list of God's humble heroes, our lately departed brother, Joseph Baumann, of Texas, must be numbered in the first ranks. He was one of those whose course and manner of life demonstrated his singleness of heart. He left no doubt in the minds of his friends. There was but one motive in his life: to him to live was Christ.

He was one of the Nashville Bible School boys -- rather an old boy; for when I first met him there, he seemed forty years old or more. He was a German by birth, as his astonishing brogue plainly testified. And he had been brought up as a Roman Catholic, in which religion he continued until he was thirty years old. He and I were on that account naturally drawn together. When I preached my first sermon in the early part of 1896 in the jail at Nashville, Brother Baumann was with me. He and I, sometimes with others, but always he and I, made our regularly Sunday pilgrimage to the jail. Neither of us could preach much; but at the jail we found an audience ready to hand, who could not escape. Our real object, however, was to do the prisoners good, and I doubt not the Lord regarded it.

Brother Baumann was very simple and childlike and plain in all his words and ways. There was not a shadow of guile or pretense about him. In his goodness he was unaffected. When he gave anything (and he gave often and liberally), he was not the least self-conscious. What he did of good works was a matter of course with him. He had no talents of policy or diplomacy in him. He was not shrewd nor specially tactful. He neither knew nor cared at any time whether he was making a favorable or any other sort of impression for himself. The wisdom he had was the wisdom of simple goodness and the straightforwardness of truth. We could, therefore, read his thoughts and ways like an open book; and what we read there was settled faith in Jesus Christ, kindness of heart, purity and honesty, and a never-wavering desire to do God's will and to help and bless others. On one occasion he said to me, "I have a hard road before me; but I must do right, if it takes the hide off" -- which was more expressive than beautiful, and his case was the unadorned expression of a soul terribly in earnest. His circumstances were such that to do right in his place came as near as anything to "taking the hide off." But he never faltered on this point -- no, and all his life long.

He was very humble. He was so humble that he did not realize he was humble, and so he never stopped to make exhibition of it. He was practically selfless. He enjoyed being teased and laughed at for his queer ways and his brogue; and when his attention was called to some ludicrous mistake of his, he laughed over it himself as over a good joke. Then he had a naive way of rating himself -- just as he would have rated and estimated a third person. "Today there are a lot of moonshiners in the upstairs of the jail," he said to me one Sunday as we were going to our mission -- "all white people from the mountains, and they have never heard the gospel, and they need something extra. Suppose you go downstairs to-day and preach to the negroes, and I'll go preach to those moonshiners." All that in sober earnest and without a touch of conceit. For he had simply concluded that he was better equipped to meet their need, and that was all, and nothing else occurred to him. On other occasions he pushed me forward, and in the same simple way.

One Sunday he was not there, and I went to the jail alone. But on Monday he came to my room and explained, "I preached out at Hill's Chapel yesterday, and so I couldn't be with you. The brethren at Hill's Chapel gave me three dollars, and I thought I ought to divide up with you." And he give me half of it.

I saw him repeatedly in Texas after my schooldays and his were over. I held a protracted meeting at Era, with his home congregation. He owned a farm near by and lived there; and it was through his influence that I went to Texas and to Era. He also requested me to hold a mission meeting at a destitute point, and gave me twenty dollars by way of encouragement. He himself had at that time already begun to preach, privately and publicly, in his vicinity. He was not a fine speaker by any means, but he commanded attention and respect, for the people knew the man, and his simple talks weighed more, no doubt, than some preachers' "grand sermons." There was an assurance of faith in his voice and love in his eye while he spoke of the things of God. Later he reached out and preached in a wider circle, at some places meeting with favor and success, at other points with opposition and persecution, which latter he accepted with unconcealed satisfaction and related to his friends with beaming countenances, as if it were a piece of good fortune. He also went to Germany, among his own people, in the interest of the simple gospel, and, of course, at his own charges, during which time he corresponded with me about the ups and downs--mostly downs--he met with. "I made them glad twice," he told me after his return; "they were glad to see me come, and even gladder to see me go." But none of these things moved him or leastwise abated his zeal and joy in the Lord. In the course of time his preaching also improved greatly.

His later history was one of labor and sacrifice and patient endurance of sufferings for the Master's sake whom he loved. A few years ago he made an urgent appeal for a missionary to Germany, and offered to help personally in paying his fare and at the rate of fifty dollars per year toward sustaining him in the field. No one responded, as far as I know.

His last headquarters were at Childress, Texas. Brother /1403/ E. H. Rogers, who had baptized Brother Baumann, and preached his funeral on October 20, states that the last illness was slow and lingering, which circumstance only exhibited to advantage the sweet, humble patience of his soul, and gave him occasion to deliver some specially effective admonition and testimony on behalf of the Lord for whom he had lived.

That is so far. We shall learn more of him in that Day. But here he was one of those whom Jesus would have called "these little ones that believe on me," whose angels "do always behold the face of my Father who is in heaven." And it is with grateful joy and with a sense of unworthiness that I write these few words in remembrance of this noble heart. And not only for his sake, but for the sake of all of us who would, like him, live as conquerors over a difficult environment, that we may turn with new courage to that grace of God which made Brother Baumann what he was.

There was yet another appreciation of Joseph Baumann by a friend and fellow preacher, N. L. Clark, who had also been deeply impressed by his strength of character and faith as well as his exemplary patience in enduring suffering and death. Clark notes the transformative power of the Christian faith: how a man of such modest abilities eventually became an example for many. He writes:

I come to pay a deserved though inadequate tribute to the memory of a departed friend, brother in Christ, and fellow-worker in the cause of truth. I knew Joseph Baumann well, in fact, I am sure that for several years I was more intimately acquainted with him than was any other person on earth. This relation between us was the result of our association in preaching the gospel. When I met him first, he lived on his farm in Cooke County, Texas. That was some fifteen years ago. I learned from his neighbors that he was a very devout man, that he was active as opportunity would permit in spreading the gospel, and that his trials were grievous. I soon found that he was a very capable preacher, though comparatively unknown to the brethren. He was a very meek man. He was never disposed to push himself before the public. Soon after I became acquainted with him I arranged for him to work with me during a summer's meetings. I put him forward as best I could because I believed him worthy and knew that he was capable. Later he accompanied me to Southern Mississippi, where I was reared and where I had already spent several summers in doing mission work. There he was very popular as a man and as a preacher. He afterwards made two trips alone to that region. Soon after I began teaching at Gunter he placed his son in my care, and within a few weeks we had the pleasure of seeing the father immerse the son into Christ. Later he built a nice residence at Gunter; which was occupied by my family for a year, while he and his son boarded with us.

Brother Baumann, several years ago, returned to his native soil in Southern Germany. His mission was to preach the gospel to the associates of his boyhood; but his people, priestridden and averse to the simple truth, turned him away. It was about this time that the clouds hung darkest over his life. Only those who knew him best during a period of sorest trial to which a human being may be heir could appreciate properly his true character and strong faith in God. His course in hours of strong temptation is to those who knew him a lasting monument to the power of the gospel to subdue fleshly inclinations and to leave all results of hard-fought spiritual battles to Him who will judge aright.

But he is gone. His trials are over; his triumphs, we believe, begun. From his career we should glean some valuable lessons. First, his successes in life in spite of great difficulties should inspire us all to nobler aspirations. If an illiterate German Catholic who could not speak English at twenty-one, among strangers, with no fortune save his nobility of character, could succeed financially, spiritually, and, to a moderate extent, educationally, what ought those who have great advantages in all these respects to accomplish? Again, the faith in such a heart seen overcoming the tempter and loyally standing by the word of the Lord is a perpetual sermon and blessing.

Let us all work and pray to have more faith in God; more genuine, overruling confidence in his promises. Such faith as Brother Baumann possessed sweetens the sorrows of life, cheers the lonely pilgrim on his way to the celestial city, and consoles, as nothing else can do, the spirit about to enter the valley of death.