The Irish standard., 1893-08-12
n, ~
HIS SATANIC MAJESTY.

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HIS SATANIC MAJESTY. Us
An Amusing and Instructive Dispute Abou1
1 the Devil Between two Priests.
Father Phelan, of the Western Watch
man, having observed that Father Lam.
bert, of the Philadelphia Times, had
objected to writing devil with capital
D, facetiousiy remarked: "Come, now;
give the Devil his due. The Devil is q
proper noun. however improper he may
be personally" To which Father Lam
bert replies in the following interesting
manner: We frankly confess we never
knew he was proper un. He is called
Ny various, nantes in the Sacred Scrip.
lures, such as Beelzebub, Abaddon,
Apollyon, tempter, old serpent, liar,
Satan, ETC., but never before, 80 far as we
know, either in sacred or profane-
especially profane-iterature, was he
ever called "proper noun" This is the
last straw on the camel's back. As the
ages roll off the scroll of nomenclature
it seems to have been left to the tail end
of the ninetee tn century to exhibit to
an astonished grammatical universe the
fact that the devil is a noun, with the
mitigating circumstances that he is a
proper" one.
Contrary to the pervading spirit of the
age, we believe that the dangers of our
times are not superstition, but skepti-
cism. And we are sad and eorrowful
that our esteemed contemporary illus
trates how far the spirit OF skeptlcism
has invaded the belief in the reality of a
personal devil by reducing him to a
s'proper noun," mere name, vox ct
praeterea nihil.
A noun, said old Lindley Murray, Is
the name of any person, place or thing.
Against this high and venefated author
ity the editor of the Western Waterman,
with tina. modesty peculiar to him, tells
us that the devil himself is a mum, leav-
ing his name to be some other part Of
speech, we suppose.
We do not keep track OF the new
tangled modern grammara, but we do
not believe they have reversed the defini-
tion of the venerable Murray. Hence
We can never be led to believe that a
noun is a person, place or thing; and we
shall ever insist, at the rick of suspen-
sion, limitation of faculties or removal to
a country parish, that noun is the nance
Of any person, place or thing, and not
the thing itself.
AS we do not question our esteemed
contemporaries orthodoxy, we take it for
granted that he believes the devil to be
a person, and this being the case, we
assume as coro]lary that he did not
mean to say that he is noun, proper or
otherwise.
It is strange, however, that living as
he does in the immediate vicinage of the
gimlet eyed mind reader, he should per-
nit himself to fall into such bad case
of pareing.
Did be perchance forget for a moment
that the editorial proper noun of the
Church Progress keeps his mental spy
glass focused on his mind?
Our esteemed contemporary may say
that in all this frivolous talk we have
evaded the real question, namely, should
the name of the devil be spelled with a
big d?
We hold that it should not, and for the
following reasons:
l. The name is found in the two
Testaments about fifty times, and it is
invariably spelled with small letter,
both in the Catholic and Protestant YER
sions of the Bible.
2. In the Catechism of the Council of
Trent, Donovan's translation, 1t is spelled
always with small letter.
3. In the Encyclopaedia Britannica"
and the american Cyclopaedia" it is in
variably spelled with a small letter.
4. In the Catechism of the Council Of
Baltimore it is spelled with small let
ter.
It is strange fact that while Satan is
always spelled with capital in the
Protestant Bible and frequently in the
Catholic, the devil always goes with a
small letter. And the same distinction
is made in most modern literature. VINO
can give reason for this distinction?
THE SHILLELAGH.
A Stick That, Like the Poet, is Born, Not
Made.
The shillelsgh was not mere stick