Getting to Millens Bay from Cape Vincent is a scenic ride along Route 12E and the St. Lawrence River. It's a popular route for cyclists; The Guy on a Bike passed about a dozen traveling in both directions. There are many spots to stop and take in the scenery.

But if you're looking toward the river, it's easy to miss the shrine.

It's less than two miles out of Cape Vincent on the east side of the road. The Guy on a Bike passed it, but turned around and stopped, not sure what to make of it, and not sure if he was trespassing.

The life-sized statue of Christ with the words "King of Kings — Lord of Lords" on a stone fence could be at home in any well-manicured churchyard. But there's no church around. Two stone tablets depict the Ten Commandments. A large cross stands over the shrine. Benches offer an invitation to sit a spell.

Later, the Guy called the Cape Vincent Chamber of Commerce, where a woman said to contact the owners of Island Shadows Mobile Home Park, across the road from the shrine. They could explain its origin.

"It's just a thank-you for gifts received," said Gary M. Beaton, who owns Island Shadows with his wife, Elizabeth. "I'm going to be 72 in a couple of weeks," Mr. Beaton said Monday. "My wife and I married as teenagers."

They have seven children and 22 grandchildren.

"When you have a great big family like that, stuff happens," Mr. Beaton said.

And when "stuff happens," Mr. Beaton said, he and his wife, devout Catholics, always pray.

In 1993, Mrs. Beaton was diagnosed with cancer. "She was given less then a 50 percent chance of survival," Mr. Beaton said. But she beat the disease.

A grandson was diagnosed with cancer at the age of 5. "Now he's 21 and will graduate from Embry Aeronautical University (in Daytona Beach, Fla.) in December," Mr. Beaton said.

Mr. Beaton said that in 1999, one of his other children had a "family problem."

"I told God, 'If you make this one right, I'll make the whole world know where it's at.'"

It was made right; thus he began work on the shrine in 2000. Mr. Beaton said people shouldn't take promises made to the Lord lightly. He paraphrases a Bible verse: "Woe to the person who makes a promise to God and doesn't carry it out."

He unsuccessfully searched locally to find a life-sized statue of Christ. He finally found one in the Bronx, at Institutional Statuary. He drove his pickup truck down to get it and installed it in 2001, "a month before 9-11," Mr. Beaton said.

After 9-11, guests placed miniature American flags at the shrine.

He estimates the shrine has cost him $35,000. When visitors get up close to the statue, music, tripped from a remote sensor, starts to play from hidden speakers in the wall. The tune is "Welcome to My World" by Jim Reeves.

"That song just seems so apropos," Mr. Beaton said.

Other touches include prosthetic, lifelike eyes in the statue instead of the concrete ones in the original. Mr. Beaton, who retired from the heavy-construction business, said he had to remove the statue's head with a Dremel rotary tool for the delicate eye surgery.

Mr. Beaton is modest about the shrine and at first didn't want his last name used for this column. He declined to be photographed at the shrine.

But he said he's glad his work gives others inspiration. He recalled the time a depressed man who had just about given up all hope drove by the shrine. The man decided to stop.

"An older woman came by and started talking to him," he said. "It turned his life around, and he reunited with his wife."

As Jim Reeves tells it:

"Welcome to my world

Won't you come on in

Miracles I guess

Still happen now and then ..."