Arthur Stace

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Arthur Malcolm Stace (1884 - 30 July 1967), otherwise known as *Mr Eternity, was a homeless man who converted to Christianity and spread his form of gospel by writing the word "Eternity" on sidewalks in chalk.

Arthur Stace and his famous "Eternity" in chalk

1 Early years
2 Conversion
3 Later
4 Trivia
5 See also
6 External links

[edit] Early years

Stace was born in the Balmain slums, in the inner-west of Sydney, Australia. The child of alcoholics, he was brought up in poverty and resorted to stealing bread and milk and searching for scraps of food in bins. By the age of 12, Stace, with virtually no formal schooling, had become a state ward. During his teenage years, he became a heavy drinker and was sent to jail at the age of 15. He then worked as a "look-out" for police trying to catch people running illegal gambling dens. In his twenties, he was a scout for his sisters' brothels.

[edit] Conversion

Stace's conversion to Christianity took place on the night of 6 August 1930, when he heard the preaching of Rev. R. B. S. Hammond at St Barnabas Church. Inspired, he converted, and was thereafter enamoured with the notion of eternity.

[edit] Later

Two years later, on 14 November 1932, Stace was inspired by the preaching of *Evangelist John G.Ridley, MC, on *The echoes of Eternity" from Isaiah 57:15:

For thus saith the high and lofty One that inhabiteth Eternity, whose name is Holy; I dwell in the high and holy place, with him also that is of a contrite and humble spirit, to revive the spirit of the humble, and to revive the heart of the contrite ones.

The preacher's words, "Eternity, Eternity, I wish that I could sound or shout that word to everyone in the streets of Sydney. You’ve got to meet it, where will you spend Eternity?" would prove crucial in Stace's decision to tell others about his faith.

As Stace said, "Eternity went ringing through my brain and suddenly I began crying and felt a powerful call from the Lord to write Eternity." While Stace was illiterate at the time, "it came out smoothly, in a beautiful copperplate script. I couldn't understand it, and I still can't."

Several mornings a week for the next 35 years, Stace would go around the streets of Sydney and chalk the word 'eternity' on footpaths, train station entrances and anywhere else he could think of. Workers arriving in the city would see the word freshly written, but not the writer, and so "the man who writes Eternity" became a legend in Sydney.

The mystery was solved when Reverend Lisle M. Thompson, who preached at the church where Stace worked as a cleaner, saw him take a piece of chalk from his pocket and write the word on the footpath. Thompson wrote about Stace's life and an interview was published in the Sydney Sunday Telegraph on 21 June 1956.

Arthur Stace died of a stroke in a nursing home at the age of 83 in 1967.

St Barnabas Church in Broadway, Sydney, the site of Stace's religious conversion, was completely gutted by fire in the early hours of Friday 10 May 2006.

[edit] Trivia

As a tribute to the man known as Mr. Eternity, the Sydney Harbour Bridge was lit up with the word "Eternity" as the year 2000 started.

The famous "Eternity" in copperplate during the Millennium celebrations in Sydney

In Sydney today, you can still see the word "Eternity" in three places:

1) On Stace's gravestone in Waverley Cemetery.

2) Inside the bell in the GPO clock tower which had been dismantled during World War II. When the clock tower was rebuilt in the 1960s, the bell was brought out of storage and as the workmen were installing it they noticed, inside, the word "eternity" in Stace's chalk. (No one ever found out how Stace had been able to get to the bell, which had been sealed up).

3) In Town Hall Square, between St Andrew's Cathedral and the Sydney Town Hall. When the area was redeveloped in the 1970s, a wrought aluminium replica of the word in Stace's original copperplate handwriting was embedded in the footpath near a fountain as an eternal memorial to Arthur Stace.