Mr Eternity - Dorothy O'Neill

Like millions of others across the world I watched, on television, Sydney’s spectacular welcome to the new millennium. Mega-fireworks whizzed over Sydney Harbour Bridge to the delight of the watching crowds. And then a single word blazed forth, written in perfect copperplate handwriting and suspended from an arch of the bridge: ‘Eternity’. Its mystery gripped us.

In the year 2000, at the conclusion of the opening ceremony of the Sydney Olympics, again that enigmatic word written in fireworks was flashed across the bridge and seen by four billion people.
I learned that this word was a tribute to Arthur Stace who became known as ‘Mr Eternity’. Arthur was born in 1884 in a Sydney slum. His parents were alcoholics, as were his brothers, and by the age of fifteen Arthur was also addicted to alcohol and was in trouble with the police for criminal activities.

In World War 1, Arthur served in France and knew the horrors of trench warfare. He returned to Sydney partially blinded in one eye and suffering the effect of poison gas. Soon after his return he resumed his life of drunkenness and crime. His addiction to alcohol tightened its grip on him; he eventually slid down to drinking methylated spirits.

However, all this changed when, on 6 August 1930, he attended a ‘Meeting for Needy Men’ led by Archdeacon R.B.S. Hammond of St Barnabas’ Church, Broadway. There were 300 no-hopers present; most of them were there for the food. But first there was a message.

Arriving in hopes of a cuppa and a rock cake, Arthur found his attention fixed on several clean, well-dressed men at the front of the hall. Learning from his neighbour, a well-known criminal, that they were Christians, he immediately felt a yearning to be like them.

At the end of the meeting Arthur left the hall and, kneeling under a fig tree in a nearby park, cried out with tears of repentance for God’s mercy. Arthur Stace received God’s forgiveness and arose a new man with power to overcome the evils of his former life.
But why ‘Mr Eternity’? In November 1932, Arthur attended a church service where the Rev. John Ridley preached on eternity. ‘Eternity … Eternity’, he declaimed. ‘I wish I could shout this word through all the streets of Sydney.’

The powerful word rang in Arthur Stace’s mind and  resonated in his ears. He felt a strong urge from God to write the word, and so, taking a piece of yellow chalk from his pocket, Arthur wrote the word on a pavement.

Now, Arthur could neither write nor spell, for his schooling had been minimal, yet the word ‘Eternity’ appeared in perfect cursive letters, two foot wide, on the pavement.

For the next 33 years Arthur continued this practice of writing ‘Eternity’ on the streets of Sydney. He would get up in the early hours of the morning and after an hour of prayer would go wherever he believed God had directed him that particular day and write, every hundred metres or so, on the pavement. He would return home by ten o’clock that morning.

In imagination, we see this short, slight, grey-haired man working his way through the streets, writing in chalk this one special word. He remained anonymous until 1956 when the minister of the church to which he belonged spotted him writing ‘Eternity’ on a pavement one day without Arthur seeing him.

’Are you Mr Eternity?’ asked the Rev. Lisle M. Thompson.

‘Guilty, your honour!’ replied Arthur. So the secret was out.
Arthur continued his work all over the city until age and ill-health took their toll and he was admitted to a nursing home for care. Arthur Stace died there on 30th July, 1967. His name and faith remain in the classic history of Australia.

On eternity

That shy mysterious poet Arthur Stace
Whose work was just one single mighty word 
Walked in the utmost depths of time and space 
And there his word was spoken and he heard 
ETERNITY, ETERNITY, it banged him like a bell 
Dulcet from heaven sounding, sombre from hell."

Douglas Stewart

Thou callest us then to understand the Word, God, with Thee God, Which is spoken eternally, and by It are all things spoken eternally … Nothing then of Thy Word doth give place or replace, because It is truly immortal and eternal. And therefore unto the Word coeternal with Thee Thou dost at once and eternally say all that Thou dost say; and whatever Thou sayest shall be made is made; nor dost Thou make, otherwise than by saying; and yet are not all things made together, or everlasting, which Thou makest by saying.
St Augustine, Confessions

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things came to be; not one thing had its being but through him. All that came to be had its life in him and that life was the light of men, a light that shines in the darkness, a light that the darkness could not overpower (John 1:1-5).

"Believe also in the Son of God, the one and only, our Lord Jesus Christ, who is God begotten of God, who is life begotten of life, who is light begotten of light, who is in all things like unto the begetter, and who did not come to exist in time but was before all the ages, eternally and incomprehensibly begotten of the Father. He is the Wisdom of God.

 Cyril of Jerusalem