A BLIND SOLDIER’S LIFE STORY

Dominion, Volume 32, Issue 150, 21 March 1939, Page 5

A BLIND SOLDIER’S LIFE STORY

Preserved From Bitterness

Atklressctl by Mr. Andrew Johnston, a returned soldier who lost his sight at the war, services of unusual interest, were held in the Karori Baptist Church on Sunday.

In the evening Mr. Johnston told the story of his life, from his birth and early childhood on a farm in the Waikaka Valley, Southland. Called to the colours in 1917, he was attached to the Rille Brigade and drafted to the front-line trenches. As he crawled out of the dug-out one late afternoon his thoughts were on the tragedy of war, and be found himself saying, “Thy will be done.” "Not,” said the speaker, “that I believe God had anything to do with my blindness. God, didn’t make me blind. God didn’t cause the war. Mau caused the war —man’s lust and greed, hatred and defiance of God’s will. But God has overruled my blindness for good.” He joined his mate on the firing step. A red flash, a' shower of steel—the “whiz-bang” which took his sight killed his mate. Taken back to England to hospital and blind school, all the tragedy of his loss came home to him. “But 1 thank God,” he said. “He preserved me from bitterness.” The speaker said the Christ who bad been all-in-all in his physical blindness had also given His life that those in spiritual blindness might receive sight. Mr. Johnston will continue his story on Wednesday evening and on subsequent evenings till the end of the month.