Samuel Sullivan Cox (1824-1889), was a Congressman, lawyer, diplomat, journalist and popular speaker.  In the work Memorial Addresses, published by the United States Congress in 1890, Samuel Sullivan Cox’s address to Congress is recorded:

“I believe in the religion which was taught and exemplified in the life of the Nazarene, and I never fail to bear testimony to the ennobling and purifying influence of the Christian religion….

“There was a poignancy in my heart when I saw the old church, where I so often worshipped, raised to the ground.  Was it not there I attended my first Sunday-school?  There it was that I learned my Bible verses, and received my red and blue tickets for proficiency.  There it was that I accomplished the memorable task of reciting all of St. Paul to the Romans….

“Those early memories were cut in durable stone.  Tarnished by worldliness, dusted with the activities of life, there have pursued me through the various vicissitudes of professional, literary, and political life.

“They became the nucleus of studies in college; the very coat of mail in the struggles against selfishness and skepticism; in fine, they prefigured and preordained my choice of spiritual belief against the delusive sophistries of new philosophies and mere material science.

“They have enabled me, in following and studying the physical advancement of the past century, to perceive in all the atoms, forms, and forces of nature, and the phenomena of mind, the truth and benignity of the great scheme of human redemption, which is founded on the veracity of Christ, and becomes, with lapsing years, more beautiful with the white radiance of an ennobling spirituality.”  - Samuel Sullivan Cox addressing Congress.  Memorial Address (United States, 1890).  Stephen Abbott Northrop, D.D., A Cloud of Witnesses (Portland, Oregon: American Heritage Ministries, 1987), pp. 101-102.