I have perfumed my bed with myrrh, aloes, and cinnamon.
Ver. 17. With myrrh, aloes, &c.] This might have minded the young man that he was going to his grave; for the bodies of the dead were so perfumed. Such a meditation would have much rebated his edge, cooled his courage. Jerusalem's filthiness was "in her skirts"; and why? "She remembered not her latter end" Lam 1:9 As the strokings of a dead hand, they say, cureth a tympany; and as the ashes of a viper applied to the part that is stung draws the venom out of it, so the serious thought of death will prove death to fleshly lusts. I meet with a story a of one that gave a loose young man a ring with a death's head, with this condition, that he should one hour daily, for seven days together, look and think upon it, which bred a strange alteration in his life.
a Mr Ward's Sermons.