[R632 : page 8]

THE COMING CONFLICT.

That there is to be a struggle, and a hard one, for the control in our Republic between the people constituting the State, and the ecclesiastics who represent the Romish Church, no rational man who understands the situation can for a moment doubt. In the light of history and reason it seems equally clear, either that the struggle is now to be decided by maintaining against the opposition the supremacy of the State in its right of educator, intellectual and moral, in its administration of justice, in the safety of elections from priestly control, and in every other legitimate exercise of sovereignty—or that if these be yielded through treachery or indifference, the struggle will sooner or later be transferred to the battle-field, and decided in the most terrible of conflicts, a religious war.—Hon. John Jay.

====================