Edifying Discourses in Diverse Spirits

The first part of the book challenges those who say they are not guilty of anything, the second to do with the idea that nature is perfect, and the third to discuss the concept of the abstract and the concrete examples.

Structure

Walter Lowrie translated The Point of View of My Work as an Author by Kierkegaard in 1939 and 1962 and included My Activity as a Writer by Soren Kierkegaard (1851) in the book, in which Kierkegaard wrote:

I attached myself again religiously to "that individual", to whom the next essential work (after the Concluding Postscript) was dedicated. I refer to Edifying Discourses in Divers Spirits, or rather the first part of that book which is an exhortation to confession. 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. Religiously speaking, there is no such thing as a public, but only individuals; for religion is seriousness and seriousness is the individual.

What we Learn from the Lilies in the Field and from the Birds in the Air

The first discourse (To Be Contented with Being a Human Being) deals with comparison and choice and how to trust God with the choice once made. He may have been echoing Goethe's Propylaen in which Goethe had written, "The youth, when Nature and Art attract him, thinks that with a vigorous effort he can soon penetrate into the innermost sanctuary; the man, after long wanderings, finds himself still in the outer court. Such an observation has suggested our title. 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." Kierkegaard writes about nature similarly to Goethe because both see it as teachers of humankind, and Kierkegaard wrote about "the inner being", or the soul.

The second discourse deals with diverting oneself from worries by "learning from the bird how glorious it is to be a human being." David F. Swenson translated several of Kierkegaard's discourses, which were published in 1958, through the efforts of Paul L Holmer. Kierkegaard wrote The Glory of Our Common Humanity. This was the second of three discourses that were all based on the text from Matthew 6 verses 24 to the end. It was titled How Glorious It Is to Be a Human Being by Howard V Hong when he translated Kierkegaard's book in 1993.

Kierkegaard wrote about the gift given to human beings that nature does not have: conscience. With the use of conscience we can know about time and the future. Something nature cannot know. He sums the human ability to love and the distinctiveness of nature up in Works of Love, which he published four months later.

The third discourse is titled What Blessed Happiness is Promised in Being a Human Being by Hong, in which he describes Kierkegaard stresses the importance there is in being a human being instead of a beast.

The Gospel of Sufferings

A.S Aldworth and W.S. Ferrie from Cambridge University translated The Gospel of Sufferings in 1955. His first three texts are from Luke 14:27 ("Whoever does not carry his cross and come after me cannot be my disciple"), Matthew 11:30 ("My yoke is beneficial, and my burden light. and It is said of him the Lord Jesus Christ: Although he was a son, he learned obedience from what he suffered"), and Hebrews 5:8. Kierkegaard writes about why it might not be so great to have the "distinction" of being an apostle.