Father, Cheer Our Souls Tonight
231

Text: Ellis Reynolds Shipp (1847–1939; LDS)
Music: Orlando Gibbons (1583–1625); altered
Tune name: SONG 13 or SIMPLICITY

This hymn, a beautiful prayer for comfort, acknowledges that life may inflict “burdens” or “dark waves.” But in a trusting and simple way, we turn to our Father, asking first for personal comfort and then for a blessing upon distant loved ones. Though not grouped with the other closing hymns in our hymnal, this hymn— new to the 1985 hymnbook— serves this purpose very well.

Almost three centuries separate the music of this hymn from the words. Orlando Gibbons, a famous English musician born in the sixteenth century, wrote the tune for a collection of hymns gathered by the English Puritan poet, George Wither. It was the thirteenth tune in the hymnal; thus the tune name, SONG 13. It has an alternative title, SIMPLICITY.

The tune’s elegant simplicity makes it a beautiful setting for the words written by one of the most remarkable women in the early history of the LDS Church. Ellis Shipp, mother, physician, and poet, blessed the lives of all around her with her many gifts. One of her daughters commented: “She had absolutely conquered herself. Her thought was for humanity— for you. What would you like? What do you need?” (quoted in Susan Evans McCloud, Not in Vain [Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1984], 186). Her unselfish nature is reflected in an excerpt from her poem “Love Divine”:

Oh, help me love humanity,
And all its virtues see,
For those who love most tenderly
Are surely most like Thee.

At the end of sixty years of medical practice, thousands of dollars were owing to Dr. Shipp. She canceled all the debts and told her wondering children: “When people have sickness they are having trouble enough; they should not be burdened with a single thought of debt. I want these books burned” (quoted in Not in Vain, 183).

Ellis Shipp’s life was the embodiment of love and solicitude. Her life’s work was to ease the burden of others. What could be more natural for her than to sense that our Father would wish to show his love for us in the same way? His love will lift us and cheer us.