Atmosphere, The, and Light—See [Light-bearers].
Atmosphere, The Christian—See [Hospitality in Church].
ATOM, THE, A WITNESS TO GOD
Not only “day unto day, uttereth speech,” but, according to science, there are innumerable voices in the world that also speak of God. A writer finds such in the atom of matter:
How then came they to be what they are? These “myriad types of the same letter”; these unhewn blocks from an unknown quarry; more indestructible than adamant; the substratum of all the phenomena of the universe; and yet, amid the wreck of all things else, this infinitude of discrete atoms alone is found incapable of change or of decay. Who preserves to them their absolute identity, notwithstanding their infinite variety? Who endowed them with their inalienable properties? Who imprest upon them the ineffaceable characters which they are found to bear? At what mint were they struck, on what anvil were they forged, in what loom were they woven, so as to possess, as Huxley declares, “all the characteristics of manufactured articles”?
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ATONEMENT
All the theological interpretations of atonement look back to the Old Testament Hebrew terms kaphar and kasah “to cover.” We are saved by an atoning sacrifice; that is, by a sacrifice which covers us.
A fire on a gentleman’s estate in England destroyed his mansion. It spread to a plantation near by, and trees and bushes were burned and charred. The gentleman next day heard the chirping of little birds in a blackened thicket close by him. He searched among the charred branches and discovered a nest, on which was lying, with outstretched wings, a dead robin. Under her were three fledglings, safe and sound. The mother bird had covered her young, saving them at the cost of her own life. (Text.)
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