His converse with the watchers and workers in the valley closes, and he makes his way into the streets of a city made with hands.
Pausing at the threshold of a palatial dwelling, he knocks and waits. The door is shut. He hears the sounds of festivity and mirth; youth, manhood, and age gayly tread the gorgeously tapestried parlors, dancing-halls, and banquet-rooms. But a little while, and the music is dull, the wine is unsipped, the footfalls abate, the laughter ceases. Then from the window of this dwelling a face looks out, anxiously surveying him who waiteth at the door.
Within this mortal mansion are adulterers, fornicators, idolaters; drunkenness, witchcraft, variance, envy, emulation, hatred, wrath, murder. Appetites and passions have so dimmed their sight that he alone who looks from that dwelling, through the clearer pane of his own heart tired of sin, can see the Stranger.
Startled beyond measure at beholding him, this mortal inmate withdraws; but growing more and more troubled, he seeks to leave the odious company and the cruel walls, and to find the Stranger. Stealing cautiously away from his comrades, he departs; then turns back, — he is afraid to go on and to meet the Stranger. So he returns to the house, only to find the lights all wasted and the music fled. Finding no happiness within, he rushes again into the lonely streets, seeking peace but finding none. Naked, hungry, athirst, this time he struggles on, and at length reaches the pleasant path of the valley at the foot of the mountain, whence he may hopefully look for the reappearance of the Stranger, and receive his heavenly guidance.
