When a great and good man passes away the world does not realize its loss. When a faithful man of God has reached life's high noon, and is called from labor to refreshment, the angels rejoice, but the church on earth mourns a said bereavement. In the death of Rev. Nathan Jackson Fox we are assured that the Synod and Presbytery of Mississippi have lost one of their greatest, purest, and best men.

He was born in South Carolina in 1815, and moved with his father and family to Alabama when a youth. He professed religion and joined the Cumberland Presbyterian church at seventeen. At eighteen years of age he joined the Alabama Presbytery, was licensed at nineteen and ordained at twenty-three. It was the wish of himself and friends that he should pursue a thorough course of study preparatory to the work of the ministry, but as those frontier fields were white unto the harvest and the laborers few, his brethren thought best for him to commence the work as a circuit rider, and he was sent out through the counties of Perry, Dallas, Wilcox, and Marengo. His memorandum shows that for the year's work he received sixteen dollars. He was then sent to the Bigby and Cane Brook circuit. He became stated clerk of Alabama Presbytery after his ordination in 1838. Soon after his ordination he entered Cumberland University, from when he graduated in 1847. During his college course he filled regular monthly appointments, and held revival meetings during his vacations. For five years after his graduation he was pastor of the Cumberland Presbyterian church at Winchester, Tenn. At the close of this pastorate he traveled to Texas as agent for Cumberland University; and on his return to Mississippi, the home of his father and family, he was called to the pastorate of the church at Columbus, Miss., in which he labored successfully for five years.

On the 28th of June, 1858, he was married to Miss Eliza L. Love, a woman of superior intellect, and eminently qualified to be the wife of such a man. In seeking this relationship, she testifies that his leading question was, "Do your sympathies so harmonize with the work of saving souls as to cause you to feel willing, in suitable ways, to make that a part of your work and direct your efforts accordingly?" His choice must have been heaven-directed. Educated and trained as a Christian teacher, she was a helpmeet indeed in all the departments of family, school, and pastorate. In the summer of 1858 he became pastor of the Shelbyville, Tenn., Cumberland Presbyterian church, drawing part of his support from the Board of Missions. Here he assisted with his own means in the improvement of the church, trained his own choir, superintended his own Sabbath-school, and left the church greatly improved.

In 1861 he was called to the care of his aged father near Louisville, Miss. At this time he became pastor of the church at Louisville, Miss., which place he held until his failing health and strength forced him to resign in 1888. During the four years of war he labored in the field during the week and preached every Sabbath, and conducted revival meetings during the summer. The churches, left without pastors, called for his labors, and he supplied some of them as far as thirty miles away, riding on horseback to fill his appointments.

After the war he opened a school in his dwelling and educated, free of tuition, many children of widows, also young men preparing for the ministry.

Though brought up in affluence, and endowed with superior talent, his closing years were years of struggle to support and educate his family. His extreme modesty forbade his pressing his rightful claim for what was due him from the churches, and too many of them withheld more than was mete. He preached every Sabbath and labored in the school-room or the field through the week, an superintendent of education in his county; and when too feeble to work, sold Bibles and continued to preach as long as he was able.

He was an earnest worker in the cause of temperance, a Mason, and an Odd Fellow, and was faithful in all these relations. For nearly twenty years he was stated clerk of Mississippi Presbytery and treasurer of the Bible Society of his county.

In 1888 he became partially paralyzed, and his nerves continued to give way until on the 13th of July 1891, in his seventy-seventh year, and the fifty-eighty year of his ministry, he peacefully fell asleep in Jesus, leaving his faithful and devoted wife and five children to mourn their loss.

The church of his choice could boast of but few greater minds than he possessed. His excessive modesty was his greatest weakness. Tender in his affections, and gentle in his nature as a woman, he shrank from leadership and promotion, and always gave place to his brethren. Choice in the selection of his words, he was sometimes slow of speech; but when his great soul forgot its own supposed littleness in its earnest outreach after other souls, his eloquence was majestic and his pulpit power was that of a giant. His sermons were models of both thought and diction, and made a profound impression upon all cultivated minds; and had he had a little more self-confidence he would have been more more widely known, and perhaps more useful as a preacher; but eternity will reveal a vast amount of good done in the fields where he so faithfully labored. He sleeps with his fathers, and his memory will be cherished by his many charges and spiritual children; and the resurrection morn will make a grand display of his finished work.
      McLemore, Miss.
[Source: The Cumberland Presbyterian, December 24, 1891, page 473]