Evening Republican, Volume 17, Number 59, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 March 1913 — BLIND, BUT PREACHES [ARTICLE]

BLIND, BUT PREACHES

New York Country Minister Delivers Two Sermons. Uses a Bible With Raised Type and His Mind Is Not Diverted by the Bight of Hobble Skirts.

Clinton, N. Y— Being blind has some advantages for a minister, in the opinion of the Rev. Clarence B. Post, pastor of the Presbyterian church, Kirkland, a few miles from this place, who is so blind that be can only just distinguish light from darkness. "Blindness brings with it a stronger power of concentration.” said Mr. Post, “and 1 am not so likely as the average minister to be diverted in my line of though by seeing the amazing hats worn by some women at church, or having to work lest vision of the Unseen be obscured by seeing near by some horrible hobble skirt.” Mr. Post was blind only in one eye until two years ago, so he saw long enough to form an opinion of some of the new fashlona Asked how he managed in the pulpit, Mr. Post said: "I have the Bible in raised print, but often it quite as easy to memorise as to read the raised print in public. I have always been l?i the habit of speaking extempore, so I am used to depending entirely on my mind. Of course. In preparing my sermons I have to get some reading done by those with sight Having heard. I ponder, and I then work out my own sermons. "As a blind minister I have had to begin at the bottom. One of the hardest things I have had to contend with is that persons with sight usually think a blind man cannot do anything, and so refuse to give him a fair chance to demonstrate his powers. “I still hope at least partially to regain my tight. The American oculists do not seem able to do anything for detachment of the retina, but a doctor In Germany has done great things, and 1 hope, if ever, 1 get rich (a likely thing to happen to a blind country minister), to go over and get his treatment "Once in the pulpit I can get along

all right,” said Mr. Post. “I know the hymns by number, and while 1 cannot read them I can usually say the first verse, and then the others do the singing. If I cannot read the Bible quite as rapidly as seeing ministers, I can rdad it correctly. If I have bad a chance to feel the lines over I can do it as well as if I could see.” The young minister thinks that 25 minutes is long enough for a sermon and he never goes beyond 30 minutes. Asked how be can tell when this is up without the power to take a surreptitious glance at his watch, be said: “Oh, that is easy,” and he took out a silver hunting-case watch without any crystal. Around the rim outside the figures were little elevations. He placed his hand on the dial of the watch and said that it was ten minutes of 4. He had told the time exactly. •