Hi Rowley, here are the basic details of the Mr Eternity story,
as promised. I will undetake a major search of the archives for
the original tract which I mentioned.

On New Year’s Eve Sydney harbour bridge will light up in fireworks,
and trumpet a single word around the world. ETERNITY ! To assist
you in making the most of this in your witnessing, you might like
to share the following true story where appropriate….

This summary by Ron Bevis, associate pastor of Maroubra Baptist
Church, in Sydney……..

This is a great inspirational story of one lonely man and the effect
his work has had on Sydney long after his death. An award-winning
documentary on Arthur Stace’s life was made in 1994. It’s one of
my favourite Christian stories, possibly because it’s Australian.
Enjoy it, and please pass it on to whoever’d like it.

Great if you read it before the 1999/2000 New Year, but still very
relevant if you read it in 2000.

BEVIS

———————————————–

Arthur Stace was a loser, a no-hoper, an alcoholic - ¶ and completely
illiterate. He lived in the streets of Sydney, regarded by many
who saw him as a lost cause.

One Sunday night in 1932 he entered St Barnabas’ Anglican Church
on Broadway, Sydney, and heard the Reverend T C Hammond preach the
gospel of Jesus Christ. Arthur was convicted by the Spirit of God.
He left the church, crossed the road, and sat under a tree in Victoria
Park where he committed his life to Jesus Christ. He became a new
creation.

Later that year he was at the Burton Street Baptist Tabernacle
on the corner of Palmer Street, Darlinghurst when he heard the evangelist
the Reverend John G Ridley preaching.

In his urgent, commanding voice, an excited John Ridley thundered
out: “Eternity! Eternity! Oh, that this word could be emblazoned
across the streets of Sydney!”

Arthur Stace the little man who still could not read or write left
that church, took some yellow chalk and, only under the inspiration
of the Holy Spirit, bent down and wrote one word on the footpath.
And throughout the night for the next 40 years, while Sydney slept,
Arthur would take his chalk and write in immaculate copperplate
handwriting the word “eternity” on footpaths, entrances to the train
station, and anywhere else he thought it would catch people’s attention.

Sydneysiders would alight from their commuter trains of a morning
and see this word as they walked to work.

In Sydney today, you can still see the word in three places…

1) On his gravestone in Waverley Cemetery, commemorating the life
of Arthur Stace who had become known as ‘Mr Eternity’.

2) Inside the huge bell in the GPO clock tower which had been dismantled
during the second world war. When the clock tower was rebuilt in
the 1960s, the bell was brought out of storage and as the workmen
were installing the bell they noticed, inside, the word “eternity”
in Arthur Stace’s chalk. (No one ever found out how Stace had been
able to get to the bell, which had been sealed up, to add this mysterious
entry to Sydney’s folklore.)

3) In Town Hall Square, between St Andrew’s Cathedral and the Sydney
Town Hall. When the area was redeveloped in the 1970s, a solid brass
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.

And the big news is that this coming Friday, as we bid farewell
to 1999 and welcome in the year 2000, the word “eternity” in Stace’s
famous copperplate handwriting, will be emblazoned NOT across the
streets of Sydney as John Ridley had wished, but across the face
of the Sydney Harbour Bridge and, thanks to modern technology seen
around the world.

Of all the words that have been spoken during the first two millennia,
the one chosen by otherwise-godless people to be featured on the
Harbour Bridge at the dawn of the year 2000, is the one that was
used to remind so many busy Sydneysiders of their impending appointment
with their creator.

Because Sydney’s fireworks display is the first of the international
celebrations to be telecast around the globe, people in every continent
will witness the miracle that God performed when he touched the
life of one little, ‘insignificant’ man — Arthur Stace — a man
who heard the voice of

God and responded by committing his life to ‘preaching’ his one-word
sermon.

Heaven only knows how God will continue to speak to the hearts
of so many people around the globe, using the work He started back
in the 1930s through one illiterate ‘lost cause’ no-hoper Arthur
Staceand his inspirationally simple use of a piece of yellow chalk.

…………………………………………………………………..

To whom it may concern

Arthur Stace (Mr Eternity) is not interred here at Waverley Cemetery

M Forrester-Reid Manager
Waverley Cemetery
St Thomas Street Bronte NSW 2024
www.waverley.nsw.gov.au/cemetery