Charles Woodruff Shields was born in New Albany, Indiana on April 4, 1825.

[1] After holding two pastorates he returned (1866) to Princeton College to take up the position of professor of the harmony of science and revealed religion, which had been established for him.

This was in effect a manifesto for a grand unity of academic disciplines, setting forth a scheme of scholarship which should fully reconcile science and Christian religion, which he considered the academic culture of the United States uniquely qualified to advance.

[3] His studies at Princeton resulted in the expansion of this essay into The Final Philosophy, or system of perfectible knowledge issuing from the harmony of science and religion (1877), and eventually in Philosophia Ultima (three volumes, 1888–1905), with a memoir by William Milligan Sloane.

He also published: He died from heart disease in Newport, Rhode Island on August 26, 1904.