SHIELDS, CHARLES WOODRUFF: 1825–1904.
" Charles Woodruff Shields (Apr. 4, 1825-Aug. 26, 1904), clergyman, university professor, author, was born at New Albany, Ind., the son of James Read and Hannah (Woodruff) Shields… He was prepared for college at the Newark Academy, graduated from the College of New Jersey in 1844, and from Princeton Theological Seminary in 1847. On Nov. 22, 1848, he married Charlotte Elizabeth Bain of Galway, N. Y. … on Nov. 8, 1849, he was ordained to the Presbyterian ministry and became pastor of a church at Hempstead, Long Island. The year following he accepted a call to the Second Presbyterian Church, Philadelphia , in the service of which he remained for fifteen years. His first wife died in 1853, and in 1861 he married Elizabeth Kane, of Philadelphia , sister of the Arctic explorer, Elisha Kent Kane…
"In 1861 he published a little book, Philosophia Ultima, which changed the course of his life. All his subsequent writing and lecturing was really an effort to substantiate the challenge uttered in the pages of that pamphlet. It advocated as an attainable and desirable object of intellectual endeavor the production of a work which should be a survey of the whole field of science, a statement of Christian theology, and a reconcilement of their apparent conflicts. This project attracted much attention … in 1865, he was made professor of the harmony of science and religion in the College of New Jersey, at Princeton . The subject had been taught more or less irregularly in many institutions, but the chair was new and created expressly for Shields. His lectures were finished literary productions, and it was not long before they took shape as a book, The Final Philosophy (1877)…
"His two great ideals, the reconcilement of science with revealed religion, and the reunion of Protestantism on a basis of ancient practices, Shields pursued with a passion which could not be discouraged. Though he frequently conducted the plain religious services which were traditional in the college chapel, he found ritual more congenial, and on Dec. 14, 1898, he was ordained deacon of the Protestant Episcopal Church, and on May 28, 1899, priest. He held his active professorship from 1865 to 1903, when he became professor emeritus. For thirteen years, 1869-82, he conducted courses in history, while continuing to lecture in philosophy.
"… He died at his summer home in Newport, R. I. , survived by two sons and a daughter; his second wife had died in 1869…"
Condensed from G. M. H., Dictionary of American Biography, Vol. XVII.
- Philosophia Ultima.
Philadelphia, 1861.
- The Directory for Public Worship and the Book of Common
Prayer, Considered with Reference to the Question of a Presbyterian
Liturgy. Philadelphia, 1863.
- Liturgia Expurgata, or the Book of Common Prayer Amended
According to the Presbyterian Revision of 1661. New
York, 1864.
- Religion and Science in Their Relation to Philosophy.
New York, 1875.
- Book of Remembrance.
Philadelphia.
- The Final Philosophy, or System of Perfectible Knowledge
Issuing from the Harmony of Science and Religion. New
York, 1877. (Republished with two
additional volumes, 1888-1905, under the title Philosophia Ultima.)
- The Order of the Sciences: Essay on the Philosophical
Classification and Organization of Human Knowledge. New
York. 1882.
- The Historic Episcopate: an Essay on the Four Articles of
Church Unity Proposed by the American House of Bishops and the Lambeth
Conference. New York, 1894.
- page: 290[View Page 290]
- The United Church of the United States. New
York, 1895.
- Church Unity: Lectures (with others). New
York, 1896.
- The Reformer of Geneva: an Historical Drama.
New York, 1898.
- The Scientific Evidences of Revealed Religion.
New York, 1900.
- Essays on Christian Unity.
- The Question of Unity.
- General Principles of Church Unity.
