And this little book seems to open with the soul expressing all this. It opens with strong and fervent desire toward _Himself_; reaching forth to apprehend Him in some more intimate manner than had been previously understood. It is as though the saint had been conscious of being in a lower condition than would now satisfy. For at times the soul rests itself simply on the firm ground of doctrines; such as "The blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanseth us from all sin." It is the simple and sure power of such truth that alone answers, at times, the need of the soul. But again, at times, the ground under our feet, as believers, is understood and rested on, and it is the Lord Himself that the soul desires. And such is its condition here. "Let Him kiss me with the kisses of His mouth." She had been keeping the vineyards--attending to things abroad, but now was learning that her own vineyard had been neglected; and the deeper things of personal fellowship are longed for. The saint is leaving Martha’s and taking Mary’s place, longing to feed under His own eye and from His own hand, and not another’s. And at the close, the soul appears to know that _it had become a keeper of its own vineyard_. At the beginning there had been the grief that the vineyards of others had been kept, but that her own had been neglected (i. 6); but now, it is conscious of being more at home, more about its own vineyard; as though it had left the Martha place, busy about many things, and assumed the Mary place, at the feet of Jesus in personal communion. viii. 12. This is the advance, the conscious, happy advance, which the soul makes through these exercises. It has reached a higher order of communion with the Lord, and it desires that this may continue till Jesus return. The very style of the writing, too, is just that which suits the heart under the power of a commanding affection. "Let _Him_ kiss me with the kisses of His mouth"--like Mary Magdalene to the supposed gardener--"If thou have borne _Him_ hence"--both _meaning_ Christ, but neither _naming_ Him. For "the heart had been before taken up with the thoughts of Him, and to _this relative_ these thoughts were the antecedent--that good matter which the heart was inditing. For they that are full of Christ themselves are ready to think that others should be so too." Or, it is as the language of the Apostle, who _means_ the day of glory and of the kingdom without _naming_ it, when he says, "I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded that He is able to keep that which I have committed unto Him against _that day_;" and again, "Henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, shall give me at _that day_."