The Mariner's Dead Reckoning (& ours)

"Every anxious traveler knows what a relief it is to his mind to find a guide board, a mile stone, or a post. 

But the mariner has to be more particular. Instead of finding guide boards and mile posts on the Ocean, he has to chain out the distance he runs, and so prove it by signs in the heavens - something after the following manner. - He takes the bearing by compass, and then judges his distance from the land or lighthouse that is now receding from his view.

 

At 12 o'clock every day this account is made up and recorded in the journal of the voyage. This is what the sailor calls dead reckoning. Every day when the sun is not obscured by clouds, the captain and officers ascertain the ship's position in relation to her latitude, by watching the sun, and noting the moment she leaves the Eastern and passes into the Western Hemisphere

  

*As the Mariner is here dependent on the celestial scenery, (sun, moon and stars,) to correct every now and then his dead reckoning, so the followers of Jesus are ever seeking from the Sun of Righteousness, whose habitation is in the heavens, a more correct view of their wanderings over the ocean of time, to correct their dead reckoning, and inspire them with unshaken confidence to pursue their pilgrimage toward the heavenly Canaan.

 
*But ah, how many professed followers of Jesus, after launching out from the shores of sin and folly, with strong determinations to pursue the voyage over life's rough sea for the heavenly Canaan of rest, have laid down their watch, and thrown by their instruments of observation, and concluded to pursue their onward course and trust alone for their destination to their dead reckoning.  

 

The case of Jacob, being overtaken by his father-in-law Laban, they

finally made a covenant that they never would pass that place to harm each other, and that they may never forget this covenant, Jacob took a stone and set it up for a pillar (or way mark) and told his brethren to gather stones and make a heap, the margin reads the heap of witness, beacon or watch-tower. 

Laban says, this heap be witness, and this pillar be witness, that I will not pass over this heap to thee, and that thou shalt not pass over this heap and this pillar unto me for harm. Gen. 31,43-52.
Cursed be he that removeth his neighbor's landmark. Deut.27:17.." Joseph Bates