Every morning for 37 years, Sydneysiders, as we who live in Sydney are called, awoke to a word that helped in unknown ways to give a focus on the deep meanings of life, death, and meaning itself.
Arthur Stace
passed into Eternity on July
30, 1967, aged 83. Born in Sydney of Mauritian parents on February
9, 1885, he had been 'born again' at St Barnabas's Church of England,
Broadway, Sydney, in August 1930, and his friends described him as a very colourful character. He had been a methylated spirits-drinking, hopeless alcoholic and derelict in the streets of Sydney, when he was converted to Christianity at about 46 years of age. He had returned from World War One shell-shocked and soon became a scout for brothels, a petty criminal, and a ‘cockatoo’ (lookout) for two-up schools (illegal gambling rooms where the Australian game of two-up is played).
Just after his conversion to Christianity, Stace heard the evangelist John Ridley at the Burton Street Baptist Church preach about a man who was converted in Scotland through ‘Eternity’ being written on a footpath. Ridley cried out
"Oh for someone to write Eternity on the footpaths of Sydney!" Arthur Stace said to himself,
"Here is something I can do for God". He did so, writing the word
in the pre-dawn with yellow chalk in perfect Copperplate italic script on footpaths half a million times over nearly four decades. I very fondly recall seeing it many times in my youth, and the strange effect that word had on my young mind. Perhaps I don't share his faith exactly, but I am still one of countless Sydneysiders he influenced.
Arthur Stace:
One of only a couple of known photographs, published for the first time in a newspaper decades after he had been a mystery man to the people of Sydney
The more colourful version of the Eternity story, which has perhaps become rather embellished with time and retelling, says that after he heard Ridley, Stace found a stick of yellow chalk in his pocket, and though he was illiterate, found he was able to write the word Eternity in perfect copperplate script on the footpath.
The pedestrians of Sydney saw this one word sermon every morning for 37 years, its origin a mystery for most of that time. When the yellow Eternity vanished from our city streets, something vanished with it.
Today there is a fitting memorial to Stace at Sydney Square, near the Wall of Water: Arthur Stace's Eternity inscribed in metal on the footpath. On
January 1, 2000, the worldwide telecast of “millennium” celebrations showed the Sydney Harbour Bridge with a city’s tribute to one of its treasured eccentrics. Though hundreds of millions watching did not know the story of this remarkable Sydneysider, perhaps it prompted more than a few thoughts about matters of importance, whether seen from a Christian perspective or any other.
"John Ridley was a powerful preacher and he shouted, 'I wish I could shout Eternity through the streets of Sydney.' He repeated himself and kept shouting, 'Eternity, Eternity,' and his words were ringing through my brain as I left the church. Suddenly I began crying and I felt a powerful call from the Lord to write 'Eternity'. I had a piece of chalk in my pocket, and I bent down right there and wrote it. I've been writing it at least 50 times a day ever since, and that's 30 years ago. The funny thing is that before I wrote it I could hardly write my own name. I had no schooling and I couldn't have spelled 'Eternity' for a hundred quid. But it came out smoothly, in a beautiful copperplate script. I couldn't understand it, and I still can't. I've tried and tried, but 'Eternity' is the only word that comes out in copperplate. I think Eternity gets the message across, makes people stop and think."
Arthur Stace, Daily Telegraph, June, 1965
and Wilson's Almanac is covering it
Listen
to Arthur Stace
Eternity:
A Tribute
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