OF THE ECCLESIASTICAL DIVISIONS IN SCOTLAND: WITH SUGGESTIONS FOR RE-UNION. BY BENJAMIN LAING, D.D., COLMONELL. "Without all controversy, the main inlet of all the distractions, confusions, and divisions of the PREFACE. THE mutual relations of the several sections of the church of Christ, and more especially of the four Presbyterian bodies in Scotland, out of the Establishment, are of a most unsatisfactory character. This is felt to be the case, and the feeling is, I believe, daily widening and deepening among both the members and ministers of all these bodies. These sections of the church are all free from state control, they have all the same form of government, they hold in common a broad basis of gospel truth, and yet they are all separate from one another ; and some of them hold no more ecclesiastical fellowship with their Protestant Presbyterian brethren, than they do with the Church of Rome. This is surely not as it ought to be. All who intelligently and seriously examine the sent state of the church, and consider the great changes that have recently taken place, and those that are evidently in progress, must, I think, feel persuaded, that |