EMMANUEL

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EMMANUEL

• Childrens Church Program

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EMMANUEL GOD WITH US E - Eminent and
immanent M Moving the kings residence M - My
home is your homeA Always and forever N
Near and far U Us E - ETERNITY L Lets
Celebrate
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WEEK 7 E ETERNITY
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WEEK 7 E ETERNITY Talk to the children about
their week and pray about any concerns. Take up
offerings Read the story of Arthur Stace Mr.
EternityTalk about What can I do that will
make my life count for Eternity Make mosaic
Eternity poster to decorate foyer Do the
colouring/craft activities Make a circle and pray
for the week ahead
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MR ETERNITY He was not what many would see as a
great leader. He was not a politician or a king.
He was a man who lived here in our own country
an unassuming man. A shy man. A man who came from
the humblest of backgrounds. Yet he was someone
who, in the strength of Jesus Christ, was
determined to make his life count for
Eternity. He would start out early, usually
before dawn, and he wandered through all the
streets of Sydney. Every morning he was somewhere
else Wynyard, Glebe, Paddington, Randwick,
Central Station. He was a frail little man,
bent, grey-haired, only 5 feet 3 inches tall and
weighing just 7 stone. He always wore a grey felt
hat, tie and a double-breasted navy blue
suit. Sometimes in the dawn light he would be
seen around Wynyard Station. He would nod to the
drunks still left on the pavement, trying to keep
warm under newspapers. As he walked, every so
often he would stop, pull out a crayon, bend down
and write on the pavement in large, elegant
copperplate the word Eternity. He would move on
a hundred yards then write it again, Eternity,
nothing more, just one simple word. For 37 years,
he chalked this one-word sermon and it is
estimated he wrote it more than half a million
times. He did not like publicity. For years,
these Eternity signs mystified Sydney. They were
an enigma. Sydney columnists wrote about it,
speculating about the author and, over the years,
several people walked into newspaper offices and
announced that they were the author. However the
real man kept quiet. Mystery Solved The mystery
all came clear in 1956 and the man who
uncovered it was the Rev Lisle M Thompson of the
Burton Street Baptist Tabernacle in
Darlinghurst. Arthur Stace was a member of that
church. He was one of their prayer leaders and
also served as the church cleaner. One day Lisle
Thompson saw Stace take out his crayon and write
the famous Eternity on the pavement. Stace did
it without realising that he has been seen.
Thompson said Are you Mr Eternity? and Stace
replied, Guilty Your Honour. Lisle Thompson
wrote a tract (called The Crooked Made
Straight) telling the little mans extraordinary
story. Journalist Tom Farrell had the first
interview. He published it in the Sunday
Telegraph on 21 June 1956. From Gutter Arthur
Stace was born in a Balmain slum in 1884. His
father and mother were both alcoholics. Two
sisters and two brothers also were alcoholics and
they lived much of their time in gaol. Stace used
to sleep on bags under the house and when his
parents were drunk he had to look after himself.
He used to steal milk from the doorsteps, pick
scraps of food out of garbage and shoplift cakes
and lollies. He had almost no formal education.
At the age of twelve he became a state ward. When
he was fourteen he had his first job in one of
the coal mines around Balmain and his first pay
cheque he spent in a hotel He became a wandering
drunk, living in a fog of alcohol. He went to
gaol for the first time when he was fifteen. He
was in his twenties when he moved to the seedy
inner suburb of Surry Hills.
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During the First World War he enlisted in the
19th Battalion, went to France and returned home,
having been gassed and now half blind in one
eye. Back in Surry Hills, Stace took up his old
habits His alcoholism was so extreme he was in
danger of becoming a permanent inmate of Callan
Park Mental Asylum. He told a reporter from The
Daily Telegraph that in 1930 he was in Central
Court yet again. The magistrate said to
him Dont you know that I have the power to put
you in Long Bay gaol or the power to set you
free. Yes Sir, he replied, but it was the word
power that he remembered. What he needed was
the power to give up drink. He signed the Pledge
but he had done that many times before. He went
to Regent Street Police Station and pleaded with
the Sergeant to lock him up. Sergeant, put me
away. I am no good and I havent been sober for
eight years. Give me a chance and put me away.
to Gospel This was during the Depression. A metho
drinker, dirty, badly dressed, had to be the
least likely of any to get a job. Outside the
Court House there was a group walking up
Broadway. The word had gone around that a cup of
tea and something to eat was available at the
Church Hall up at St. Barnabas. In the 1930s one
would put up with almost anything for free
food. The date was Wednesday August 6th 1930
and it was a meeting for men conducted by
Archdeacon R.B.S. Hammond, the Rector of St
Barnabas Church. There were about 300 men
present, mostly down and outs, but they had to
endure an hour and half of talking before they
received their tea and rock cakes. Up front
there were six people on a separate seat, all
looking very clean, a remarkable contrast to the
300 grubby-looking males in the audience. Stace
said to the man sitting next to him, a well-known
criminal Who are they? Id reckon theyd be
Christians, he replied. Stace said Well look
at them and look at us. Im having a go at what
they have got. Arthur Stace knew that his life
was in a mess. He knew that he needed to change.
And he knew that he needed help. After the
service was over, he crossed the road to Victoria
Park where he sat under a tree and committed his
life to Jesus Christ. Over the next few weeks,
Stace found that he was able to give up drink and
he said As I got back my self respect, people
were more decent to me. So he found a job for
the dole, working at the sandmills at Maroubra
one week on, one week off at 3 a week. It was a
few months later in the Burton Street Baptist
Tabernacle at Darlinghurst he heard the
evangelist, the Reverend John Ridley. Ridley was
a Military Cross winner from World War I and he
spoke about the Lord Jesus Christ and the
forgiveness that can only be found in Him. Ridley
told his audience that men and women everywhere
must think about Eternity and where they will
spend it. He shouted I wish I could shout
ETERNITY through the streets of Sydney. Stace,
recalling the day, said 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 there and wrote it. The funny
thing is that before I wrote I could hardly have
spelled my own name. I had no schooling and I
couldnt have spelt ETERNITY for a hundred
quid. But it came out smoothly in beautiful
copperplate script. I couldnt understand it and
I still cant. Stace claimed that normally his
handwriting was appalling and his friends found
it illegible. He demonstrated this to a Daily
Telegraph reporter. He wrote ETERNITY across the
pavement gracefully with rich curves and
flourishes, but when he wrote his own name
Arthur it was almost unreadable. Ive tried
and tried but ETERNITY is the only word that
comes out in copperplate, he said.
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After eight or nine years he did try something
else OBEY GOD, and five years later, GOD OR
SIN and GOD 1st, but finally he stuck with
ETERNITY. He had some problems. There was a
fellow who followed him round and every time he
wrote ETERNITY this other character changed it to
MATERNITY. So he altered his style to give
ETERNITY a large, eloquent capital E and that
solved the problem. The City Council had a rule
against defacing the pavement and the police
very nearly arrested him many times. But I had
permission from a higher source, he said. He
lived with his wife, Pearl, in Bulwarra Road,
Pyrmont, and this was his routine He rose at
400am, prayed for an hour, had breakfast, then
he set out for the suburb he had in mind and
arrived there before dawn. He took his message
every 100 yards or so where it could be seen best
then he was back home around 10am. First he
wrote in yellow chalk, then he switched to
marking crayon because it stayed on better in the
wet. Whenever he travelled, he did the same and
he wrote Eternity during trips to Newcastle and
Wollongong and even Melbourne and on the
footpaths of country towns, going as far as
Cessnock and Wellington. Helping people know
Jesus But writing Eternity wasnt all Arthur
Stace did to help men and women come to know
Jesus. On Saturday nights he led gospel meetings,
with Open Air Campaigners, at the corner of
Bathurst and George Streets just across from
the Cathedral. At first he did it from the gutter
but in later years he had a van with electric
lighting and an amplifier. Stace eventually
became a member of St. Barnabas Broadway, where
he had first heard the gospel in 1930. When the
Rector of St. Barnabas, Canon RBS Hammond, died
in 1946, Stace was one of five people who were
invited to speak at his funeral. That was still
nine years before it became public that he was
Mr. Eternity. So, what should we think of
Arthur Stace? Was he an eccentric? Maybe he was
in some ways but consider this. In the eyes of
this world, he counted for little. His
background, his education, his social status
all weighed against him. But then he met Jesus.
And he wanted everyone to pause and think about
how they would spend eternity. Would it be with
Jesus? Or would it be without him? Half a million
times, Arthur Stace bent down and wrote that word
Eternity on the footpaths of our city. And it
made a difference. It made a difference to
generations of Sydney-siders. I guess that it is
only in heaven that we will know how much
difference. Arthur Stace died of a stroke in a
nursing home on July 30, 1967. He was 83. He left
his body to Sydney University so that the
donation given to the family could go to charity.
He was finally buried at Botany Cemetery. A
fitting monument There were suggestions that the
city should erect a plaque to his memory. One
suggestion was that there should be a statue in
Railway Square depicting Stace kneeling, chalk in
hand. In 1968 the Sydney City Council decided to
perpetuate Staces one-word sermon by putting
down permanent plaques in numerous locations
throughout the city. But a team of City
Commissioners stopped the idea. They thought it
was too trivial. For weeks there was angry debate
in the Letters to the Editor columns. One reader
believed Mary Anne Smith, who gave us the Granny
Smith apple, was far more worthy of
recognition. But finally Arthur Stace did get his
plaque. It happened ten years after his death and
it was due to Ridley Smith, architect of Sydney
Square next to St. Andrews Cathedral. He set the
message ETERNITY in cast aluminium, set in
pebbles, near the Sydney Square waterfall. The
Sydney Morning Heralds Column 8 said In letters
almost 8in high is the famous copperplate message
ETERNITY. The one word sermon gleams in wrought
aluminium. Theres no undue prominence. No garish
presentation. Merely the simple ETERNITY on
pebbles as Arthur Stace would have wanted
it. That monument is still there.
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But perhaps the most fitting memorial to Arthur
Stace came on 1st January 2000 as, via
television two billion people saw that word
Eternity in the copperplate handwriting of
Arthur Stace, on the side of the Sydney Harbour
Bridge. The point of all this is quite simple Do
you think that you can do nothing of value for
the Kingdom of God? Youre wrong. If you think
that the Lord cannot use you for his kingdom and
his glory, then think again. You dont need
money, or education, or a place in society to
come to Jesus. And you dont need those things to
make your life count for Eternity. We can do a
lot worse than to be girded to action by the
example of that humble Christian man, Arthur
Stace. ______________ Assembled from various
sources to coincide with the millennium
celebrations in 2000. A prime source was various
transcripts of a book by Keith Dunstan, which is
apparently out of print. Photographs of
Archdeacon RBS Hammond and the St. Barnabas
Wednesday evening mens meeting were published in
He That Doeth The Life Story of Archdeacon R.
B. S. Hammond, O.B.E. by Bernard G. Judd,
published in 1951 now out of print.
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