I know not what the future hath

I know not what the future hath. John Greenleaf Whittier* (1807-1892). As with most of Whittier’s work in hymnbooks, this is a selection of his stanzas from longer poems. The stanzas come from a poem, ‘The Eternal Goodness’, from which comes also ‘Who fathoms the eternal thought’*. The poem was published in The Independent, a weekly periodical (New York, 16 March 1865), and then in Whittier’s The Tent on the Beach, and Other Poems (Boston, 1867) (Rogal, 2010, p. 47). There are different versions from this poem in hymnbooks. One is  ‘I see the wrong that round me lies’ in ICH4, the Unitarian Hymns of Faith and Freedom (1991) and the Congregational Federation’s Peculiar Honours (1998). The...