Dr

Scala philosophizes about God, science and death. His main character, Dr. Swarthmore,

a doctor of divinity, meets a Higher Being after kneeling at the death bed of one of his parishioners. This Being
draws Swarthmore upward where he witnesses Jesus's return to earth. He joins the growing throng as Jesus leads
them to a cemetery where he proceeds to raise a man from the dead. An opened coffin, reveals the repulsive
actuality of a rotting corpse. The end result of the miracle is an empty coffin, which disappoints the crowd.

Later Dr. Swarthmore visits the City of God, where he enters the center of the city, the
tabernacle. In it, he finds a faceless dead figure who is the apex of the city. Scala does not identify
this figure but one can deduce that it is the face of the man that was raised from the dead. The
center of life being death.

There is another man, Mr. Blount, who enters the story. He is a a member of Dr. Swarthmore's
congregation. He hears the doctor's sermon on another significant moment in the pastor's life, when
he saw the ocean for the first time. In this sermon he confesses that he cannot believe that God would
be interested in the microcosm of man. He then encounters God in the macrocosm of the ocean. Dr.
Swarthmore feels at one with God and the universe. He holds creation in his hand but quickly loses
this power and control. He realizes that he never really had it anyways. God tricked him into
believing that he was in control.

After hearing this sermon, Mr. Blount picks up the pamphlet that Dr. Swarthmore has written of his vision
of the Christ returning at the end of the world. He sees that he can make money out of this. Money is the
motivator in all aspects of Mr. Blount's life, including the religious.

Mr. Blount builds a great scheme to exploit peoples' fear in order to sell the pamphlet. At the pivotal
moment of the sales, a secular doctor enters the scenario and presents science as an alternative to Dr.
Swarthmore's vision. Blount sees that this idea has more potential for profit than Dr. Swarthmore's gloomy
apocalypse. Science is the new answer to man's woes. But man's ultimate foe is still the corpse in the
coffin, Death.