‘Anvil of God’ finds home at site of Orono church

And so, I thought, “the anvil of God’s Word

For ages skeptic blows have beat upon:

Yet, though the noise of falling blows was heard,

The anvil is unharmed, the hammers gone.”

– John Clifford

ORONO – The English clergyman who composed the verse probably never imagined his words would inspire a Maine man to build a 17,000-pound steel monument crowned with a giant bronze anvil. The words written by the 19th-century minister and social activist, however, spurred a retired Farmington welder to spend his waning years working on the sculpture.

For years, the monument sat on the front lawn of Albert and Emily Fyfe’s home on Route 2. Last fall, the monument was moved to its new home on Orono Road. Today, the “Anvil of God” rests on the future site of Bible Baptist Church. The congregation now meets above the Subway restaurant on Hammond Street in Bangor.

The church purchased the 15-acre plot three years ago and has cleared the site where the new church is to be built in a few years when funds are raised, according to the Rev. Arthur Dean, founder and pastor of Bible Baptist. Last fall, the congregation moved the monument from Fyfe’s yard to its new home almost 100 miles away.

“Albert said he wanted to build something that would be a testimony to his faith, and he always wanted it to be in a visible place where people could stop and read the plaques,” Dean said last year. “The farmer who lives across the road tells us that people often stop to see exactly what it is and read the plaques.”

By the end of the month, landscaping around the monument should be completed and banners identifying the site should be installed, explained the pastor. Eventually, the monument will be lit at night, said Dean.

The 10-foot-tall monument rests on a concrete slab. Its base is made of welded 1-inch sheets of steel and decorated with plaques on three sides, including the one containing Clifford’s poem. Other statements on the plaques include, “He is the vine, we are the branches,” and “Tested, tried, true. The authorized King James Version,” referring to the 17th-century English version of the Bible.

Bible Baptist’s ad in the yellow pages states that the church uses the King James Version of the Bible. That is one of many small things that Dean and Fyfe had in common.

Dean heard about the monument from a friend about 12 years ago and went looking for it. The minister has pictures in his office of him holding his infant daughter, now 13 years old, standing in front of the monument with the Fyfes on either side of him. As Albert Fyfe’s health failed, Dean and his family made yearly trips to Farmington to repair and repaint the monument.

Fyfe died in 1996, but not before he and his wife, Emily, wrote in their wills that the monument be left to the church. The couple left it to the Bangor church because Bible Baptist was the only religious institution that showed any concern or interest in it, said Emily Fyfe.

“Pastor Arthur Dean and his family have been coming over here every year to help us maintain it and to visit. We decided to give it to them when we both died, but with the way the world is going, I don’t want to wait that long,” she told the local newspaper last year.

Albert Fyfe completed the monument in 1981 after working on it for seven years in seclusion. Three years later, the 75-year-old retired Bath Iron Works welder told a local reporter that the biggest challenge in working on the project was the weather.

“I worked nights, sometimes only a half-hour or so, because it was so cold. The monument was right outside all the time, and the light was bad. But I knew when it was done and people saw it, it would be an awakening for them,” he said.

Fyfe knew his Scripture and considered himself a Christian, according to Dean, but did not attend church regularly. He said that he built the monument as a response to the “lawlessness” he saw in the world.

“What I want people to see within this monument is a change of heart, mind and spirit,” according to a 1984 article quoting Fyfe.

Dean said that getting the monument in place last fall made the “congregation’s hopes, dreams and vision for the church real.”

A Greenville native, Dean did not attend church as a child, but was converted to Christianity while in college in the mid-1980s. He returned to the area after attending Bible college in Springfield, Mo. The new pastor began conducting worship services in homes with a handful of people, he said. Today, attendance averages 95 on a Sunday morning.

“We hadn’t planned on having this monument,” said Dean, “but this is a sign to us from the Lord that we are doing exactly what he wants us to do.”

Services at Bible Baptist Church are held at 10 a.m. and 6 p.m. Sundays and 6:30 p.m. Thursdays, upstairs at 619 Hammond St. For information, call 945-9952.