The Whispering Gallery

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Title:     The Whispering Gallery
Author: Howard J. Chidley [More Titles by Chidley]

[Christian story -- From: Fifty-Two Story Talks to Boys and Girls]

If you ever go to London, one of the many buildings which will be pointed out to you will be Saint Paul's Cathedral, which is capped by a wonderful dome. And if you ask the guide, he will show you in that dome a strange room known as the "Whispering Gallery." In this gallery your lowest whisper can be heard on the other side of the room, a great distance away. It would be hard to tell secrets in a room like that.

But there is a still more wonderful whispering gallery than that. It is the one which each one of us carries about in his own soul. In that gallery even things we think, whether we say them or not, are heard by God, our Creator. No thought escapes Him. "In Him we live, and move, and have our being." If we "take the wings of the morning, and fly to the uttermost parts of the earth," even there God is still.

This would be a very terrible thing to realize if all our thoughts were evil thoughts, unkind and unlovely. For then we should be like the man who, when he was young, ill-treated his old father and mother. When he grew up, this young man became very wealthy, and he used to carry candy in his pocket as he walked in the parks to give to the children, because he wanted their love. But the children would take his candy, then scamper away like frightened squirrels, because something inside seemed to tell them that the man was not really kind at heart. Older people felt the same way about him, and a chill came over them when they were with him. So they avoided him. It would be unbearable to think that only our evil thoughts were open to God in that way.

But while God knows all the wickedness in our hearts, and we cannot hide anything from Him, God also knows the good thoughts that are whispered in the gallery of our soul. And when we wish ever so greatly that we could do something to help somebody, but cannot do it; or when we would like to be good, but are tripped up by some temptation, God knows then how hard we try, and gives us credit for our effort, even though we fail to do what we wanted to.

Let us remember the Whispering Gallery of the soul, then, and when we think evil thoughts, even though we never tell them to our nearest friend, let us be sure God knows them. And when we try hard to be good and to do good, but fail, let us also remember that God sees it, even though none else knows. Our prayer each morning ought to be like the psalmist's: "Let the words of my mouth, and the meditations of my heart be acceptable in Thy sight, O Lord, my strength and my redeemer."

[The end]
Howard J. Chidley's short story: Whispering Gallery

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