Kierkegaard had been working toward creating a place for the concepts of guilt and sin in the conscience of the single individual.

He discussed the ideas generated by both Johann von Goethe and Friedrich Hegel concerning reason and nature.

He then made them less abstract by making A into the Young Man in Repetition (1843) and B into his guide, the psychiatrist Constantin Constantius.

He published these discourses and later wrote a longer dedication called The Crowd is Untruth[3] where he wrote: This, which is now considerably revised and enlarged, was written and intended to accompany the dedication to "that single individual," which is found in "Upbuilding Discourses in Various Spirits."

Here Kierkegaard wrote, "I attached myself again religiously to "that individual", to whom the next essential work (after the Concluding Postscript) was dedicated.

Perhaps nobody noticed it the first time I employed the category "that individual", and nobody paid much attention to the fact that it was repeated in stereotyped form in the preface of every number of the Edifying Discourses.

Even horrible crimes are committed, even blood is shed, and many times in such a way that it must truly be said of the guilty one: He did not know what he was doing –perhaps he died without, through repentance, ever getting to know what it was he did.

Indeed, does passion ever really know what it is doing; is not this its ingratiating temptation and its apparent excuse, this delusive ignorance of itself because at the moment it had forgotten the eternal, because continued in a person it changes his life into nothing but moments, because it perfidiously serves its blinded master while working its way up to make him serve like a blinded slave!

Hate and anger and revenge and despondency and depression and despair and fear of the future and trust in the world and faith in oneself and pride that mixes in even with sympathy, and envy that mixes in even with friendship, and the changed but not improved inclination—when this was present in a person, when was it without the delusive excuse of ignorance?

It is only on the step, in the gateway, the entrance, the vestibule, the space between the outside and the inner chamber, between the sacred and the common, that we may ordinarily tarry with our friends.

The lily was, according to the Gospel's truthful account, more beautifully clothed than Solomon in all his glory and in addition was joyful and free of care all the day long.

If the rigid and domineering person cannot ever create, he wants at least to transform – that is, he seeks his own so that wherever he points he can say: See, it is my image, it is my idea, it is my will.

Indeed, I assure you that if my life through no fault of my own were so interwoven with sorrows and sufferings that I could call myself the greatest tragic hero, could divert myself with my affliction and shock the world by naming it, my choice is made: I strip myself of the hero's garb and the pathos of tragedy; I am not the tormented one who can be proud of his sufferings; I am the humbled one who feels my offense; I have only one word for what I am suffering—guilt, only one word for my pain—repentance, only one hope before my eyes—forgiveness.

I would throw myself upon the earth and appeal from morning till night to the heavenly power who rules the world for one favor, that it might be granted me to repent, for I know only one sorrow that could bring me to despair and plunge everything into it—that repentance is an illusion, an illusion not with respect to the forgiveness it seeks but with respect to the imputation it presupposes.

No, praise God, that can never happen, because properly understood the eternal already has a certain overweight and the person who refuses to understand this can never begin really to deliberate.

The following is from his introduction: In his trilogy Opbyggelige Taler i Forskellig Aand ("Edifying Discourses in Another Vein"), Kierkegaard passed from a general religious and philosophical standpoint to a specifically Christian one.

The Gospel of Sufferings forms the third part of that trilogy, and is a central plank in the structure of Kierkegaard's mature thought.

But neither have we played fast and loose with our words; on the contrary, to the best of our ability we have added the weight of earnest reflections to the joy, in order if possible to exercise a restraining influence.

His Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses were all signed by Soren Kierkegaard as author while other books, such as, Either/Or, Repetition, and The Concept of Anxiety were published under pseudonyms.

Previously Kierkegaard had published his own books through two different bookstores, Bookdealer P. G. Philipsen Three Upbuilding Discourses, 1843 and C.A.

The first section was translated into English in 1938 by Douglas V. Steere and titled Purity of Heart Is To Will One Thing.

Harold Victor Martin published Kierkegaard, the Melancholy Dane (1950) and had this to say about this book: The personal religious sense of Repetition in relation to time and eternity is brought out by Kierkegaard in a striking Discourse entitled: The Joy of it—that what thou dost lose temporally, thou dost gain eternally.

p. 60[23]Robert L Perkins of Stetson University edited The International Kierkegaard Commentary Upbuilding Discourses in Various Spirits in 2005.

Douglas V. Steere wrote a lengthy introduction to his 1938 publication of the first part of Upbuilding Discourses in Various Spirits.

He says Eduard Geismar (1871–1939), the Danish scholar, said of the book, "It seems to me that nothing that he has written has sprung so directly out of his relationship with God as this address.

"[24] Steere wrote Doors Into Life in 1948 and devoted his fourth chapter to Kierkegaard and Purity of Heart.

How fortunate for us, then, that this solitary Dane exercised his awesome analytical and rhetorical skills to tear down the veil of deception and uncover the essential folly of his time, and in so doing, bequeathed to us powerful critical tools.

Such is the case with suffering, which is a scandal to a Feuerbach and a matter of glory to a Pascal, but to both a distinguishing note of the Christian mode of existence.

In the degree that it promotes a meditative inwardness, Christianity makes us aware of God's supreme goodness and our own distance from, and hostility towards, His holiness.

And yet this is the way it is for the person who wants to understand sin.... "The doctor and the pastor ask about your health, but eternity makes you responsible for your condition.