Autumn 2025
' Sermons from Two Brothers’ - by the Rev John G Faris
Some years ago I deposited with the Presbyterian Historical Society of Ireland (PHSI) sermon scripts by my grandfather George Faris, minister of Caledon, 1906 – 1924, and then of Coagh where he died in September 1925, having been born in 1877. He also served as a licentiate assistant in 1st Derry and 1st Newry and carefully wrote when and where he had preached his sermons, sometimes repeating them after a period even in the same place.
I have recently deposited with the PHSI a box of sermons and prayers by his younger brother Samuel or Sam (1878 - 1956). Sam inherited the family tea blending business in Washington St., Cork, and was active in many Christian pursuits: elder and then session clerk in Trinity Presbyterian Church, Cork, founder and captain of the 2nd Cork Boys’ Brigade Company and secretary to the Cork YMCA. He also conducted services in many small churches (mainly Presbyterian) in Co Cork and beyond, such as Aghada, Bandon, Bantry Methodist, Cahir, Clonmel, Cork Congregational Crosshaven (summer Sunday evenings) Ennis, Fermoy, Kinsale Methodist, Limerick, Lismore, Queenstown/Cobh, Tralee and Youghal Methodist.
George’s sermons are full handwritten scripts. I reckoned that one would take 40 minutes to deliver. However, Sam’s sermons, such as survive from 1926 – 1955, are in the main typed and would last 20 plus minutes. None exist for 1956. As he died in May 1956, he was perhaps slowing down, and mindful of a vacancy in Trinity, Cork which came to an end not long before he died.
George’s style is discursive and maybe is too much like a theological essay, but a grandson, the writer, remembers a kindly remark made to him as a young minister. that there is a difference between a bible study and a sermon which also applies to a theological essay and a sermon. My father (John A Faris) remembered him as a kindly, gentle and reserved person. In the early 1920s he followed a correspondence course in the Coué system ("Every day, in every way, I'm getting better and better.”). Katharine G Faris his daughter and my aunt told me that his wife Grace, my grandmother, had encouraged him to build self- confidence by doing this course, and she also had recommended her daughter to peruse the documents, but I don’t think she ever did. I regret that I dumped the documents of the self- help course before handing over the sermons to the PHSI.
From what memories remain and from especially some BB talks and letters Sam comes across as more outgoing and confident with a “good sense of humour”. In a letter to my father in February 1956 he congratulated him on the purchase of a “charabanc” (a Bedford minibus) and opined that it would be useful for taking the monkeys to the zoological gardens (referring to his four grandnephews). My one memory of him is of him pretending to be a tiger and “tiger” was pronounced in a Cork accent.
In an address to Cork YMCA in 1955 on “Charity” Sam shows good humour in describing his struggles with a recalcitrant boy; “… humanly speaking I would have preferred to apply the third degree than accepted Christian method. … I heaved a sigh of relief when a friendly war removed him to another sphere. I have since heard, but without proof, that he joined the Merchant Navy and was converted at a Salvation Army meeting in Belfast. Who knows what the great day will bring forth?”
Both brothers may be described as liberal evangelical in their theological position, in the mainstream of opinion in the Presbyterian Church in Ireland (PCI) in the first half of the 20th century. George had died before the heresy trials of Principal JE Davey in 1927, but my mother remembered Sam telling her with approval that his brother in law, Rev. John Irwin (married to Emily Acheson, a sister of both George’s wife Grace and Sam’s wife Molly), retired minister of Windsor congregation had drawn up arguments in defence of Davey and that William Corkey, his successor as minister in Windsor, had delivered them. Davey’s views were endorsed by a large majority of the General Assembly.
As a student for the ministry in the early 1900s, George struggled with his ability to subscribe whole heartedly to the Westminster Confession of Faith before being licensed but overcame his scruples.
[From his journal - My thanks to my brother George for making these journal extracts available. ]
28 October 1902 “The Committee meets again to-morrow, and I shall know the result of my exam. for certain, and if successful shall be orally examined. I shall also be asked about the Confession and shall have to state that while I believe it to be founded on the word of God, I cannot accept it in every particular. It will be an important and trying day in my life.”
The entry for 31st October records some success and some annoyance:
“I have passed my final examination. The results were made known on the 29th and I was then examined orally on Scripture and the Confession of Faith. I got through this very well and in a manner exceeding greatly my own expectations. Dr. Field the Convener then examined us individually on our motives for entering the ministry and on our spiritual lives. This was very unnecessary as, in my case and that of most of the others, it was all gone through before. It is a disgrace that a man should be called upon to lay bare his soul in presence of a large committee. It should be done once only and in private.”
19 November: “On Monday 17th inst. I was licensed to preach and signed my adherence to the Westminster Confession of Faith. I trust I feel the responsibility which rests upon me, and the sacred character of the ministerial office.”
It is said that Dr Lowe, the Clerk of the General Assembly, brusquely gave him no alternative to subscription. [Family anecdote recounted by my mother]
We have no data as to the precise particulars of the Westminster Confession that George would have found hard to accept. Whatever about the discursive style, the impression is of a biblical but not strongly evangelistic orthodoxy, in common with many in the PCI at that time. His brother was more likely to conclude with an appeal to personal commitment.
George did comment on current events, as preachers should in some measure, but I think on two matters he was simply wrong. He referred positively to Prohibition in the USA and expressed the hope that a similar law banning alcohol would be enacted on our side of Atlantic. He was not to live to see the negative effects of Prohibition although his wife’s grandfather, the Rev. James Glasgow (whom George never met), had written presciently in his journal in 1883:
Intemperance is a great evil but it should be reformed on scriptural principle. Dr Edgar adopted abstinence from distilled spirit. Then came Father Mathew with a pledge and a medal; then Good Templars - then unfermented wine - and now blue ribbons - and in America the compulsory Maine Law - which ought to come under the name of local option - the option of forcible suppression. If this is carried, illicit distillation, smuggling, shebeening, and apprehension with bloodshed will prevail. Moral advocacy and avoidance of impossibilities is what christians [sic] should aim at. Anything else is hopeless. This what I have thought since in 1831 I first joined the Temperance Society.
The other matter is his view justifying the First World War as the pursuance of mission by other means. I quote from his report about the General Assembly in June 1918, and from a sermon preached in November 1918 in thanksgiving for the German surrender. Both are typical of his preaching style.
One of the features of our Foreign Mission night at the Assembly this year was a visit from the Right Rev. Dr J.N. Ogilvie, the Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland and also Convener of the Foreign Mission of the Church of Scotland, and he spoke to us about the relationship between the Foreign Mission enterprise and the great and terrible war which is being carried on in the world. At first many people were afraid that the war between nations all of whom acknowledged Christ would have injurious effects upon the appeal which we were making to heathen peoples. That had not happened at all. The most serious result of the War in its relation to Missions is the cleavage which it has created between German missionary agencies and the agencies of the Protestant powers. Dr Ogilvie said that it would be many years before brotherly fellowship or co-operation could be resumed and he did not expect that many of us would live to see to see the cleavage healed. That cleavage is a loss to the Christian world but it was one of these evils which has flown from the war. He thought however that it was the only evil. On the other hand he assured us that the war had given the biggest uplift to the Foreign Mission work of Christ that it had ever received. The War and Foreign Missions are working for the same great end. What is that end? The real reason why we are carrying on the War today is in order that Christ and not antichrist shall rule the world. That is also our aim in foreign missions. War and missionary work are not two enterprises. War is a bit of missions, and missions are a bit of War. Dr Ogilvie said that there was no better missionary sermon than the sermon which the war was preaching. This central message of the war is that there are certain things which the soul must love and serve if that soul is to live. Those things are the love of God, the love of man, and the love of right. What a poor, miserable, shrivelled thing the soul of Germany is today. Where is the love of God the Father as revealed to them in Jesus Christ? Where is the love of man? And as to their love of right - the moment that their treaty with Belgium was torn up and became a mere scrap of paper right as a guiding principle had vanished. We are fighting for these great principles today in France, and our missionaries are fighting for them also in India and China and other parts of the world.
[Thanksgiving for the German surrender]
The social service committee has under its consideration some of the problems which will face us after the war. One of the most serious facts which the war has brought to light is the attitude of soldiers towards the church. Some of the chaplains who've been out at the front and who have had great opportunities of coming into contact with the men have brought back reports which are somewhat startling. They tell us that while a minority of the men are loyal to the church, the vast majority are out of touch with it. And the problem before us is how we are caught to elicit the sympathy of so many men who had displayed such heroism, such cheeriness amid toil and trial, such unselfish comradeship and such splendid manhood.’ The men who have displayed such magnificent virtues must be dear to the heart of Christ, them up they cannot be far from Christ, and it is a serious question for us why we are failed to bring them within the Christian society. A book has recently been written by a Scotch Presbyterian which should give all Christians, and especially all Christian ministers food for anxious thought. The title of the book is called “As Tommy sees us - a book for church folk”. The man whom we call Tommy is the average male British of today. However you may explain it, he does not like or admire the church. He does not belong to it and does not want to. He neither fears nor loves it. Its life seems to him petty and dull. Of course there are some of whom these words are not true, but they are a minority. The plain fact is that our strong, virile young manhood of the nation, the men who are the saviours of the nation today, almost are lost to us. As the church we have failed to win them. It will not do to say that these men are in self-will refusing God, that they are worldly, loving pleasure more than God. No doubt this is true with regard to some of them, but it is not the whole truth. For these men have such splendid virtues. They are patient, brave, self-forgetful, loyal to their comrades. They hate their life, says this chaplain from whom I quote, because it is hateful, and yet they stick it because it is their duty. Drab and weary, soaked in mind and aching in every muscle, they go on week after a week enduring the fate which has come upon them through muddles and intrigues in which they played no part. There is a splendid man in most of them. I do not understand the chaplains, if there be any such, who have not felt humbled by them. When all fears were in the way and possible death very near, we met them singing and joking, and our hearts told us ‘these men are bigger than me’.”
Curiously, George does not refer to his own experience with the YMCA in Palestine 1917-18. My father, born in March 1913, had clear memories of his father’s interest in the progress of the war. I suppose he was not different from most other clergy of his time in seeing Britain’s cause as the right cause and as Christ’s cause, but the question remains: how could he and the Scottish Moderator and many other Christian leaders hold the deluded view that war and mission had similar aims and that the war would advance rather than retard mission? That he highlighted the Social Service Committee’s report and the view of the Scottish chaplain that men in the trenches were largely lost to the church shows that reality was getting through to some degree.
Sam’s papers include many prayers as well as sermons. In 1936 he listed for prayer in Lismore “King etc. Rulers and Judges, Empire, League of Nations, Peace, Free State, Church universal …”. One is marked as having been used in Queenstown and Aghada in 1937 (and other places) and again in Aghada in November 1949. At some point he drew a line though this sentence. “God bless our Royal House, the King and Queen, and all who surround the throne, Grant onto them the true spirit of wisdom and understanding.” This may be linked to the declaration of Ireland as a Republic in 1949 after the Republic of Ireland Act of 1948. In 1941 he prayed “Look down in Thy mercy upon our empire in its day of battle, bless our troops, grant wisdom to our leaders and statesmen. Be with our King and his royal house. May all lands under our flag and all our allies humble themselves before the King of Kings and Lord of Lords and acknowledge thee before the world as our Lord and our God.” In 1944 he prayed: “In Thy goodness and mercy Thou hast led our commonwealth of nations and our allies through days of great affliction and much anxiety until this hour when victory is in sight.” No sense there of Ireland’s neutrality. (We should bear in mind that his two nephews were serving in the British forces, as well as some local Cork Presbyterians so the sense of anxiety was personal.). It may be noted that on Remembrance Sundays right up until the late 1940s, the pulpit in Trinity Cork was draped in a Union flag. Sam’s “British” prayers reflected the outlook of his fellow Presbyterians.
The prayers read well, and some are annotated to show their sources eg Anthology of Prayers for Public Worship, United Free Church of Scotland. He expounds biblical stories and has a theme that faith is more than for going to church, it demands our all.
These two sets of papers may prove to be a treasure trove for researchers in the future desirous to get insights into Presbyterianism in Co Tyrone in the 1910s and 20s and in Co Cork from the mid-1930s to the mid-1950s.
Spring 2024
Presbyterian Funerals - by John W Nelson
In this generation Presbyterian ministers are completely familiar with the process of taking funeral services, in the family home, in an undertaker’s “Funeral Home”, or in their own church or meeting house. Indeed funeral services in Presbyterian churches have increased greatly in numbers in the last 25 years. Until 200 years ago this was not the case.
Originally Presbyterians had a strong aversion to the idea of holding a service at a funeral. For them, this was too reminiscent of the pre-reformation Roman tradition, which they reacted against in every way possible. In the 17th and 18th centuries, in Ulster, the custom was for the minister, on being notified of a death, to attend in the family home and to read Scripture and offer prayer. Having brought consolation in this way, the minister would then leave. He would not attend the burial, which was a purely functional event with family and community conveying the deceased to the burial ground for the interment, after which the proceedings finished when the grave had been filled in.
However, some ministers felt a need to deliver an address to the assembled mourners and came to the conviction that a service in the meeting house would be appropriate on such occasions. The journal of Rev. A.G. Malcolm (minister of Newry 1809 – 1823) gives an insight into the beginning of these new developments in Irish Presbyterianism.
On 28th November 1812, a funeral service was, for the first time, held in the meeting house of Newry, before the interment of Mrs. Glenny, wife of Isaac William Glenny, one of the elders of the congregation. In August 1818, Rev. Malcolm pronounced an oration at the graveside for the first time, and he continued this custom, “though the funeral service in the meeting house is usually preferred”. Indeed, afterwards, he often repeated the address in church and at the graveside. By 1820, the precentor and choir were preparing special music for use in church funerals, so by then church funerals must have been fairly common. It is highly likely that these occasions, whether conducted by the minister in church and/or at the graveside, were amongst the first Presbyterian funerals in Ulster. It is only fair to mention however that for the next 150 years the great majority of Presbyterian funerals took place from the home of the deceased.
Malcolm’s journal makes mention of the pulpit being draped in black for memorial services of national significance. As the nineteenth century advanced that custom was followed for the funerals of Presbyterian ministers themselves and has continued into our own time.
Autumn 2023
A Black Sheep - by John Faris
My great great grandfather Rev James Glasgow pioneer Irish Presbyterian missionary to Gujarat, North India kept journals, the last one of which (1857 -1890) is my treasured possession. I am trying to transcribe it to a blog[1]. Every now and then a nugget appears:
1870 24 April It has been rumoured that my nephew the Rev James Glasgow Armstrong of St Louis Missouri has joined the Prelatic church in America. I am apprehensive that this may be true; as in a letter some months ago he spoke in apologetic terms of the prelatic system. May God lead him to knowledge of the truth.
“Prelatic” refers to the episcopal system of church government. His uncle did co-operate with Anglican missionaries, probably those of “low church” and evangelical outlook but he chronicles a conflict in Ahmedabad in the early 1860s with a “Puseyite”[2] army chaplain who prevented him from holding services in an army chapel. Glasgow attended one of the chaplain’s services and “heard a tolerably pretty nothing on 1 Cor 15.56, - a rich subject [?] surely.” It must have been intimidating to have the pioneer Irish Presbyterian missionary seated in the congregation.
I googled Rev James Glasgow Armstrong and found his obituary from the St Louis Post in March 1891. It records his nephew’s colourful career: rumoured to be the assassin of Abraham Lincoln (they had fake news back then) and also disciplined twice, once for drunkenness and again for drunkenness and frequenting houses of ill fame, denied by him on both occasions. In addition his daughter created a sensation by deserting her husband on the morning after their marriage. “She is now on the stage.”[3]
Further googling produced speculations about him being John Wilkes Booth, the assassin of Abraham Lincoln and some more information about his career and final disgrace.[4] The theory was that Booth had not been killed on arrest but had somehow escaped to St Louis where he had presumably disposed of Armstrong and taken up his persona. Evidence was adduced that they looked alike, with a scar and a limp and that Armstrong was much interested in drama, giving lectures on Shakespeare in later life, as well as having a daughter “on the stage”. (Booth was an actor.) But Armstrong visited the old country in 1866 and 1881 and even if Booth had been able to deceive Americans, I don’t imagine Armstrong’s uncle and other shrewd Co Antrim relatives would have been deceived for long. (Unless he managed to persuade them to join the conspiracy …)
We should dismiss the Booth speculation, but Armstrong came under both Presbyterian and “prelatic” discipline, alcohol being involved on each occasion.
In 1867 when he was a United Presbyterian Church minister in St Louis “a charge of drunkenness was preferred against him by a member of the congregation, and he was tried by the Illinois Presbytery …and was found guilty and ousted. Then he was taken into the Old School Presbyterian Church and shortly afterwards accepted a call to Couteau Avenue Presbyterian Church. … The change from United Presbyterian to regular Presbyterian denomination was not so great, as the doctrines of faith of the two denominations are substantially the same, the principal difference being that the United Presbyterians sing the Psalms of David, as the Scotch Presbyterians do and are also opposed to membership of the Masonic and other secret orders.”
A couple of years later Armstrong joined the Episcopalian Church and was rector in different places until coming to Atlanta, where “he was charged with having visited a house of ill fame in Cincinnati and was found guilty and suspended for five years.” The obituary quotes an “intimate friend” who refutes the identification with Booth, as Armstrong was in St Louis at the time of the assassination. This friend also disputed the first charge of drunkenness and apparently as many as thirty members left the congregation and followed their ex-minister to his new charge. He also quoted a written explanation from Armstrong about the Cincinnati incident.
“He was on his way to New York for a summer vacation when he received a telegram from a relative to assist him in locating and recovering a daughter who had gone astray in Cincinnati … the two went to Cincinnati together and after visiting several houses of ill fame found the girl and induced her to return home. They did not visit the houses as clergymen, because that would have defeated their object. While they misrepresented their business there, they did not do anything else that they could be blamed for, and the cabman was mistaken in supposing them to have been intoxicated.”
That the sanction was a five year suspension rather than dismissal from office may suggest that the Bishop was somewhat sympathetic and wanted him to step back for the scandal to recede. But it is strange to have been accused falsely twice of being intoxicated. It was presumably during his suspension that Armstrong started his drama lectures. He died in 1891 before he could resume ministerial duties.
Thankfully his uncle had predeceased him in 1890, for not only is James Glasgow referred to in his nephew’s obituary as an “episcopal missionary” which he would not have appreciated given his opposition to “prelacy”, but he seems to have been ignorant of the shadows around his nephew - both the undeserved imputation of being Lincoln’s assassin and the more substantial and sad allegations to do with alcohol. As another great great grandson[5] has remarked “There is always one black sheep in the family.”—
John Glasgow Faris retired from ministry in Aghada and Trinity Cork in 2017. His father’s mother was a daughter of Glasgow’s youngest daughter, Harriet Acheson.
[1] http://revjamesmcclureglasgow.blogspot.com/
[2] Puseyite a reference to the “High Church” movement in Anglicanism, often known as the “Oxford Movement” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxford_Movement in which E. B. Pusey (1800-82) was influential.
[3] https://www.newspapers.com/clip/13396935/st-louis-post-dispatch/
[4] http://hauntedohiobooks.com/news/11107/
[5] Mr Alastair Rankin
Welcome Back to Heritage - by Alison McCaughan
As a retired teacher, I am sometimes asked by strangers, “What did you teach?”
When I reply, “I taught, history”, I often get the response, “Oh dear. I hated history at school; it was all dates and lists and terribly boring. But, you know what? I am really interested in history now. I love finding out about my own area and I do wish that I knew far more Irish history.”
Leslie Clarkson, a former professor of history at Queen's University, Belfast has written, “History is important. We are what the past has made us, and what we believe the past to have been influences how we behave in the present. The purpose of doing history is to entertain, to instruct, and to enhance understanding of ourselves and the society of which we are part.”
Whilst most people would agree that history is important, the challenge is to make history accessible; and this is what the articles in Heritage aim to do. Our hope is that you will find articles that are entertaining and interesting, but also which will whet your appetite to explore our PHSI website further.
Raymond Gillespie has written that in every local area there are interests or things which draw people together and he gives the examples of family, social groupings, politics and religion. The latter, of course, includes Presbyterianism. In Ireland, Presbyterianism is complex and much has been written about the theological controversies within Irish Presbyterianism throughout the years. But Presbyterianism is also about the stories of the people who lived through traumatic times, who got on with living as well as they could, and found solace and comfort in their personal faith as they faced social, political and personal crises. It is hoped that Heritage will include stories about all the people, the great and the good, the conservative and the radical, the well-known and the little-known . . . and some rogues and rascals forby!
A Night to Remember - by Jim Stothers
It was Sunday 19th December 1982 and my first Carol Service as Minister of St Johnston and Ballylennon in east Donegal. The service was in St Johnston church. There was a funeral in St Johnston graveyard that afternoon after which I stood at the foot of the church tower, just looking round at the gravestones, the people, and across the river to County Tyrone on a cold but calm day.
There was a minor controversy about the Carol Service. In my ignorance as a new minister I had arranged it for 7.30pm, not the traditional time of 8.00pm. Anyway, it was well attended and enjoyed by all. We sang nine carols altogether, beginning with ‘Silent Night’. It would turn out that it would be anything but a ‘silent night’! 1982 was an exciting year for us, with my installation in my first charge on 1 April, and the birth of the first of our three sons, Mark, on 15 October. Little did we realise as the service ended and I stood in the vestibule to shake hands with people as they left what was to happen a few minutes later. The last of us left at 8.40pm and I made my way over to the manse, just beside the church. It had started to rain quite heavily. Shortly after 9 o’clock I started to change two-month old Mark’s nappy – a cloth one, mind you, with safety pins – when suddenly there was a deafening bang. Smoke filled the house, and water started to leak from a pipe up on the kitchen wall. Oh, and the lights went out! I had been changing the baby on a mat in front of a coal fire, so was able to finish that job, but by now the smoke was making us choke. Where were we to go? It was pouring down outside, and you couldn’t breathe. The entrance hall to the manse was the answer. Dry, with fresh air – but the cold of a December night!
We weren’t sure what happened at first but it became evident that lightning had struck the church tower, travelled to the other end of the church, then across on the mains electrical wires to the manse where it blew up the fuse-board, and then jumped from the wiring into a copper pipe (the source of the water leak) to find an earth. The whole village of St Johnston had the electrical and telephone systems destroyed. We found shelter for the night and the next few days with one of the congregation’s elders, until power was restored and we were able to be back in the manse. Christmas was spent with my and Lynda’s parents in Belfast and Comber.
The manse was habitable again relatively soon but the church was wrecked, the most obvious destruction being that of the tower, but also the heavy lath and plaster ceiling came down in most of the length of the church from vestibule to pulpit. The Rt Rev Dr Tom Simpson as Moderator spoke at the re-opening service on 4 March 1984.
There were some remarkable, perhaps even providential things about that night. Firstly, a representative of the insurance company had inspected the church earlier that year in the summer and certified it – in writing – to be fully covered (even though there were no lightning conductors!), so there was little draw on the congregation’s financial resources. Secondly, the congregation raised funds for repairs anyway. So, when, after well over a year worshipping in the church hall, and it being realised that it was in serious need of refurbishment, there were funds to make a start on doing that and we ended up with a much improved building. And most importantly, my mistake on the timing undoubtedly saved lives. If the service had been at the traditional time of 8.00pm there would have been a large number of people still in the vestibule – and it had been totally wrecked by the large chunks of masonry that fell into it from the tower that night. A night to remember!
Heritage - a magazine that deals with history!
But please don’t let that frighten you. Sadly for many the thought of history revives old school nightmares of memorising names and dates. This is different. This is history as a story – HIS Story.
The idea of Heritage is to give you a flavour of the story of Christ working through His Church by retelling the story of past events and people, giving you information, or helping you find more information. In other words while we want to make the story more accessible, the main component in all of this is YOU. You are part of this story, just as your forebearers were and as you children will be.
The first issue of Heritage included
Hello and Welcome
PHSI Website
I didn't know that!
How God used a poor preacher
The Porter Family
What happens when people move away?
Discover more about the history of the Covenanters
A new beginning - History of Mullingar Presbyterian Church
Exciting future for the Society as new premises open
Make a start here to finding out something more about HIStory in Ireland.
The second issue of Heritage included
Hello and Welcome
The day the minister called
Creevelea Presbyterian Church
William Martin
Francis Makemie – the father of American Presbyterianism
Would you believe it?
The historic synods revisited
William Dool Killen
New Publication – Dr Tom Baker
The third issue of Heritage included
Hello and Welcome
Blackmouth
Ancient Baptismal Font
The Story of Revivals in Ireland
Something for Nothing!
Presbyterians in the Episcopal Church
The Days of the Mayflower
Lost and Not Found!
St Patrick a Presbyterian
New Publication – Sketches of the History of Presbyterians in Ireland 1803