Obituaries Australia

Mr Eternity has written his last one-word sermon on the pavements of Sydney.

Arthur Stace, whose copperplate handwriting in chalk for more than 30 years exhorted society, died on Sunday night, aged 83.

A very colourful character to those who knew him well, Arthur Stace found a new direction in life when he accepted Christianity at St Barnabas’ Church of England, Broadway, 37 years ago.

A few years later he heard the evangelist John Ridley tell a congregation in Burton Street Baptist Tabernacle that he wished he could “shout eternity through the streets of Sydney.”

Arthur Stace took up the cry in his own way, using his stick of chalk in the anonymity of the early hours of the morning.

He regarded himself as divinely talented to write this one word, Eternity, the only word he could write in the faultless copperplate that was his trademark.

He married late in life and for many years he and his wife, Pearl, lived in Bulwara Road, Pyrmont. She died in 1961.

When he moved to the Anglican Church’s Hammondville Nursing Home he continued his work infrequently until he had a stroke about three months ago.

The Rev. Stewart Mitchell, of Burton Street Tabernacle, said that Arthur Stace was a charitable man who, although he could have afforded a good funeral, preferred to leave his body to a university so that his savings could go to missions.

Mr Mitchell will conduct a service in memory of Mr Eternity in the tabernacle today at 2 p.m.