Page:Selections from the writings of Kierkegaard.djvu/207

 sufferer dares to flee to it, for fear of mankind. The fact is, it is most important for the world to keep up the appearance of being compassionate; but this it made out by divine compassion to be a falsehood and therefore: away with divine compassion!

But now the inviter represented precisely this divine compassion and therefore he was sacrificed, and therefore even those that suffered fled from him; for they comprehended (and, humanly speaking, very exactly), what is true of most human infirmities, that one is better off to remain what one is than to be helped by him.

In the second place: the inviter likewise had an other, and altogether different, conception than the purely human one as to what constitutes man's misery. And in this sense only he was intent on helping; for he had with him neither money, nor medicine, nor anything else of this kind.

Indeed, the inviter's appearance is so altogether different from what human compassion would imagine it that he is a downright offense to men. In a purely human sense there is something positively cruel something outrageous, something so exasperating as to make one wish to kill that person in the fact of his inviting to him the poor and the 'sick and the suffering, and then not being able to do anything for them, except to promise them remission of their sins. "Let us be human, man is no spirit. And when a person is about to die of starvation and you say to him: I promise you the gracious remission of your sins that is revolting cruelty. In fact it is ridiculous, though too serious a matter to laugh about."

Well (for in quoting these sentiments I wish merely to let offended man discover the contradiction and exaggerate it it is not I who wish to exaggerate), well then, the real intention of the inviter was to point out that sin is the destruction of mankind. Behold now, that makes room, as the invitation also made room, almost as if he had said procul, o procul este profani, or as if, even though he had not said it, a voice had been heard which thus interpreted the "come hither" of the invitation. There surely are not