The Future Of Mankind Poem by John Bowring

To Sir John Bowring.

What is the future of mankind,
Its progress or its light to me,
In the deep craving of my mind
That it may now illumined be?
Not for himself, but for his race,
Shall I be told that man was made?
Is earth, then, his abiding place?
And are his bones beneath it laid,
Manure-like, but to pave the way
For crops of more enlightened clay?


It cannot be. Sufficient light
Hath man for all God asks of Him,
Though now it may be clear and bright,
And now it be but faint and dim.
Such difference is of His design
Whose ends beyond our knowledge lie;
We know that they must be benign,
That all goes well beneath His eye,
Who rules and watches from above
The work of His almighty love.


For each of us the time and place
That shape our doom is now and here;
And in ourselves we all may trace
Enough to make our duty clear.
Not in the page of any book,
Give it what sacred name we may,
Must we alone for guidance look;
The Bible of supremest sway
Lives in the human heart and mind,
As all who seek it there will find.


The world is wiser for its age;
But He who progress made its law,
Well pondered each successive stage,
Nor one repents that he foresaw.
'Better than cycle of Cathay-
Of Europe fifty years.' Is't so?
How dare we aught were better say
Than is-until we better know!
Throughout the Future-Present-Past-
God is o'er all, from first to last.