Later on the seventy-two translators, according to the same tradition, which has come to us through some of the old ecclesiastical writers, were brought to the island of Pharos, where they went to work in separate cells, undisturbed and living according to a uniform rule, until the entire work of translation had been accomplished. Then the results were compared, and it was found that the translations of all agreed in a wonderful manner, and the Jews accepted it as a work done under the special protection of Jehovah. Whatever we may hold as to the accuracy of the above account and its pretended origin, it is certain that the story was current before the time of Christ, it being credited by Philo, who repeats it in his Life of Moses, and by Josephus, as well as by St. Justin Martyr and others of the early Christian Fathers. All agree that the Septuagint translation was made about the time of Ptolemy, and that the Jews of Alexandria and Palestine held it in equal veneration as a faithful copy of the Mosaic books, whilst the pagans regarded it in the light of a wonderfully complete code of laws--civil, domestic, and moral. Reference has already been made to the Sacred Scriptures as constituting the oldest and best-authenticated record of ancient history. From it we draw the main store of our information regarding the beginnings of human society in the Eastern countries of Mesopotamia, early Chaldea, Assyria, Persia, Arabia, and Egypt, all of which are grouped around the common centre, Palestine, where the principal scenes of the Old and New Testament narrative are laid. But it is not only in the departments of history and geography that the Bible represents the most extensive and reliable source of information hitherto open to the student of mental culture. The sacred books, although never intended to serve a purely scientific purpose, have within recent years become recognized indicators which throw light upon doubtful paths in the investigation of certain scientific facts. Sir William Dawson, one of the leading investigators of our day, has lately published his Lowell lectures, in which he shows how science at last confirms and illustrates the teaching of Holy Writ regarding geology and the creation of man.[1] Similar conclusions are being daily reached in different fields of scientific research, and the words of Jean Paul regarding the first page of the Mosaic record, as containing more real knowledge than all the folios of men of science and philosophy, are proving themselves true in other respects also. We may be allowed to cite here from Geikie's "Hours With the Bible" the testimony of the late Dr. McCaul, who gives us a legitimate view of the latest results of science as compared with the Mosaic record of the Bible.