Samuel Cox (1826–1893), a religious journalist and author, was born on 19 April 1826 near London, and educated at a school at Stoke Newington. At the age of fourteen he was apprenticed at the London docks, where his father was employed, but on the expiry of his indentures he resigned his position and entered Stepney College to prepare himself for the Baptist ministry. After passing the college course and matriculating at London University, Cox became in 1852 pastor of the Baptist chapel in St Paul’s Square, Southsea. In 1854 he accepted an invitation to Ryde, Isle of Wight, where he remained until 1859. A disorder in the throat compelled him to cease preaching, and caused him to turn his attention seriously to literature. He wrote for The Freeman, the organ of the Baptists, and occasionally acted as editor, and became a contributor to The Nonconformist, the Christian Spectator, The Quiver, and other religious periodicals. In 1861 he was appointed secretary to the committee for arranging the bicentenary of the Ejection of 1662. But his throat problem proved less permanent than had been feared, so that in 1863 he accepted a call to become pastor of the Mansfield Road Baptist Chapel, Nottingham, a position he occupied successfully and happily until 1888, when failing health compelled his resignation. In 1873 he married Eliza Tebbutt of Bluntisham, Huntingdonshire. He retired to Hastings, where he died at his home, Holme, Godrich Road, on 27 March 1893. He was buried in the general cemetery at Nottingham. His wife survived him. 

Although Cox’s ministry was effective and zealous, his chief activity was as a writer. His resumption of ministerial work in 1863 did not interfere with his literary energy, and he became in 1875 editor of The Expositor. The conception of this monthly magazine was evolved by Cox from his own work as a preacher and writer on the Bible. He was editor until 1884, being responsible for the first twenty volumes, some of which he wrote almost entirely himself. But he gathered round him a distinguished staff, including authors from a variety of denominations, such as W. C. Magee, Marcus Dods, and William Robertson Smith. The journal had a powerful influence on the religious thought of the day. Its general tendency is perhaps best indicated by a sentence in Cox’s own exposition of his aims in the first number:

Our sole purpose is to expound the scriptures honestly and intelligently by permitting them to explain themselves; neither thrusting upon them miracles which they do not claim or dogmas to which they lend no support, nor venturing to question the doctrines they obviously teach or the miracles which they plainly affirm.

Cox’s services to learning received the remarkable recognition of nearly simultaneous offers from Aberdeen, Edinburgh, and St Andrews universities of their degree of DD. Cox accepted in 1882 the offer of the last-named, but found himself compelled after 1884 to resign his editorship because the breadth of his views had become displeasing to the proprietors of the magazine. Cox stated that he was the writer of thirty volumes and the editor of twenty more. Most of these were biblical expositions. The most widely read and influential was Salvator Mundi: or, Is Christ the Saviour of all Men? (1877), which was followed in 1883 by a sequel, The Larger Hope, in which Cox defined his position with regard to universalism, and answered some of his critics. Among counterblasts to Cox’s teaching may be mentioned The Doctrines of Annihilation and Universalism … with Critical Notes and a Review of ‘Salvator mundi’ (1881), by Thomas Wood. The postscript of this challenges Cox’s impartiality as editor of The Expositor, and is an instance of the kind of complaints which brought about his resignation.

An example the kind of theology that attracted opposition for Cox is evident in these words from his Salvator Mundi: or, Is Christ the Saviour of all Men?:

‘If Christ took flesh and dwelt among us that He might become at all points like as we are and threw open the kingdom of heaven to all believers; if He trod, step by step, the path we have to travel from the cradle to the grave, must He not also, for us men and our salvation, have passed on into that dim unknown region on which our spirits enter when we die? Did He leave, did He forsake our path at the very moment when it sinks into a darkness we cannot penetrate, just when, to us at least, it seems to grow most lonely, most critical, most perilous? … Surely our own reason confirms the revelations of Scripture, and constrains us to believe that, in all worlds and in all ages, as in this, Christ will prove Himself to be the great Lord and Lover of men, and will claim all souls for his own’. – Samuel Cox, Salvator Mundi: or, Is Christ the Saviour of all Men? (2 ed; London: C. Kegan Paul and Co., 1878, 196–7.

Principal Source: Ronald Bayne’s article in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.

Sources: E. Cox, ‘Prefatory memoir’, in S. Cox, The Hebrew twins (1894) · The Freeman (7 April 1893) · Independent and Nonconformist (6 April 1893) · British Weekly(30 March 1893) · Christian World (30 March 1893) · CGPLA Eng. & Wales (1893) · P. Schaff and S. M. Jackson, Encyclopedia of living divines and Christian workers of all denominations in Europe and America: being a supplement to Schaff-Herzog encyclopedia of religious knowledge (1887)

Archives: U. Nott. L., notes and sermons

Wealth at death: £445 1s. 2d.: probate, 7 June 1893, CGPLA Eng. & Wales 

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