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."