gle examples among scores which show how inevitably
such traditions regarding sacred books are developed in the earlier
stages of civilization, when men explain everything by miracle and
nothing by law.(461)

(461) For the legend regarding the Septaguint, especially as developed
by the letters of Pseudo-Aristeas, and for quaint citations from the
fathers regarding it, see The History of the Seventy-two Interpretors,
from the Greek of Aristeas, translated by Mr. Lewis, London, 1715; also
Clement of Alexandria, in the Ante-Nicene Christian Library, Edinburgh,
1867, p. 448. For interesting summaries showing the growth of the
story, see Drummond, Philo Judaeus and the Growth of the Alexandrian
Philosophy, London, 1888, vol. i, pp. 231 et seq.; also Renan, Histoire
du Peuple Israel, vol. iv, chap. iv; also, for Philo Judaeus's part in
developing the legend, see Rev. Dr. Sanday's Bampton Lectures for 1893,
on Inspiration, pp. 86, 87.

As the second of these laws governing the evolution of sacred literature
may be mentioned that which we have constantly seen so effective in the
growth of theological ideas--that to which Comte gave the name of the
Law of Wills and Causes. Obedient to this, man attributes to the Supreme
Being a physical, intellectual, and moral structure like his own; hence
it is that the votary of each of the great world religions ascribes to
its sacred books what he considers absolute perfection: he imagines them
to be what he himself would give the world, were he himself infinitely
good, wise, and powerful.

A very simple analogy might indeed show him that even a literature
emanating from an all-wise, beneficent, and powerful author might not
seem perfect when judged by a human standard; for he has only to look
about him in the world to find that the work which he attributes to an
all-wise, all-beneficent, and all-powerful Creator is by no means free
from evil and wrong.

But this analogy long escapes him, and the exponent of each great
religion proves to his own satisfaction, and to the edification of his
fellows, that their own sacred literature is absolutely accurate in
statement, infinitely profound in meaning, and miraculously perfect in
form. From these premises also he arrives at the conclusion that his own
sacred literature is unique; that no other sacred book can have emanated
from a divine source; and that all others claiming to be sacred are
impostures.

Still another law governing t