Samuel Cox

Born near London on April 19, 1826, he was educated at Stoke Newington and was first apprenticed at the London docks, where his father worked. After leaving that path, he trained for the Baptist ministry at Stepney College, later studied at the University of London, and began serving congregations in Southsea and then Ryde on the Isle of Wight.

Trouble with his throat forced him to step back from preaching for a time, which pushed him toward writing. He contributed to and sometimes edited religious periodicals including The Freeman, and he later returned to the pulpit as pastor of the Mansfield Road Baptist Chapel in Nottingham, where he served from 1863 until ill health led to his retirement in 1888.

Although he was known as a minister, his strongest influence seems to have come through his writing and editorial work. He launched and edited The Expositor from 1875 to 1884, gathering an impressive circle of contributors and building the magazine into an important forum for biblical interpretation and religious thought. He received a Doctor of Divinity degree from St Andrews in 1882 and died in Hastings on March 27, 1893.