tIBRARY OF PRINCETON 
 
 
 - ! 
 
 
 
 THtOLOC \RY 
 
 
CHARLES WOODRUFF SHIELDS. 
 
 A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 
 
 BY 
 
 WILLIAM MILLIGAN SLOANE. 
 
 
 HBRARY OF PRINCETON 
 
 , 1 
 
 
 - 1 2005 
 
 
 
 THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY 
 
 
CHARLES WOODRUFF SHIELDS. 
 
 i. 
 
 The ideals of youth are seldom realized, and yet some 
 men see the fruit of their labors, being so blessed that after 
 a long and laborious life, they die as young in feeling and 
 in enterprise as they were in early youth. In his eightieth 
 year Charles Woodruff Shields was as much himself, as 
 fully in possession of all his fine powers and qualities as he 
 had been in the prime of his years. It was therefore with a 
 sense of fulfilment that he left in the hands of a friend 
 certain manuscripts for posthumous publication as the com- 
 pletion of his life work. His choice fell upon one who is 
 a layman to both lines of the study which so engrossed the 
 author, a fact interpreted as meaning that the editor was 
 to confine himself strictly to the task of verbal correction, 
 and to avoid all effort at revision or rearrangement of the 
 matter. This is the more evident as most of the philo- 
 sophical and apologetic material had already been printed in 
 one form or another, and had had the careful revision of 
 the author. What follows as the last division of the " Final 
 Philosophy " is therefore given exactly at it was intended 
 to stand, and in connection with the two preceding volumes 
 needs no introduction. 
 
 ii. 
 
 The author of these chapters was fully aware of the 
 position he had taken and of all the responsibilities incident 
 to the selection of a title which was almost a challenge: 
 though personally one of the most modest of men, he was 
 fearless to a fault in the exposition and defence of the truth 
 
viii Charles Woodruff Shields. 
 
 as he saw it. He was convinced that all the sciences could 
 be united into one Christian philosophy, and that all denom- 
 inations of Christian believers could be united into one 
 visible church of Christ. In no sense did he conceive that 
 the " final " word in philosophy was to be spoken by him, but 
 he did believe and was not ashamed to declare that these 
 exalted ideals would never approach realization unless the 
 plan were outlined and fruitful suggestions were made to- 
 wards its accomplishment. This he essayed to do and in 
 the effort he deployed extraordinary powers of research 
 and of assimilation. This was not all, for as it stands the 
 " Final Philosophy " is far more than a suggestion, it is a 
 system more or less complete of Cosmic philosophy, based 
 on a synthesis of all the empirical sciences in their natural 
 order of an ascent which culminates in theology, or rather 
 in a theistic ontology derived from Revelation as a valid 
 source of data. 
 
 In the same way the author of the " United Church of 
 the United States" (1896) suggested with the strength of 
 a firm conviction and the force of a historical expert that 
 practical Church unity was within reach if only a beginning 
 were discussed and made. For him the most striking phe- 
 nomenon of contemporary history was the elasticity of the 
 federal system in politics, a system which in his own country 
 comprehended in a roomy edifice men of every land and 
 tongue, of every tradition and practice, provided only they 
 were devoted to the essential idea of liberty under law. He 
 could see no good reason why in some similar way men of a 
 common faith should not, under an elastic constitution, mass 
 their forces against the forces of infidelity and worldliness. 
 The question of church unity was for him an eminently 
 practical one, to be solved in a churchmanlike and politic 
 way. Assiduous in his study of the historic forces which 
 had rent the reformed churches into denominations, he pro- 
 posed a method of reintegration which was based on the 
 most sacred convictions of believers and on the lessons of the 
 past. 
 
A Biographical Sketch. ix 
 
 in. 
 
 The personality of Dr. Shields was as engaging as his 
 mind. He was elegant and urbane, sensitive and fasci- 
 nating, a man of refinement and culture, with all the charm 
 of manner which springs from self-respect and consideration 
 for others. His company was eagerly sought by the best 
 society and his conversation was stimulating and refreshing. 
 He loved the atmosphere of quiet studies, but he was happy 
 in the world and sensitive to its charms. No man could be 
 more ardent and industrious in the pursuit of knowledge, 
 nor more contemplative in its interpretation ; yet he had 
 abundant leisure for friendship and the duties of his home. 
 His love for his university was a passion, and he served her 
 with a devotion which ennobled her life and his own. In 
 his veins ran the blood of old colonial stock, north and south, 
 his view of his country was correspondingly catholic and 
 patriotic. 
 
 The endearing qualities of the man were as marked as the 
 wide range of his learning. Constructive scholarship is not 
 always gentle, far from it, and it is interesting to trace the 
 origin and evolution of the man who is both a gentle man 
 and a learned man. This combination was the preeminent 
 characteristic of Dr. Shields : it was due partly to heredity 
 and partly to a broad and varied training. 
 
 Mere pride of birth is vanity. The world is full of men 
 and women whose personal insignificance is only heightenad 
 by the achievements of the ancestors from whom they claim 
 descent. But on the other hand, there are many who are 
 stimulated to great energy by the knowledge that there 
 courses in their veins the blood of men who have lived on 
 a high plane and who have achieved something for God and 
 fatherland. Among the notes of Dr. Shields, written late 
 in life and evidently as a pastime, are some remarks on the 
 subject which are of much interest in explaining the char- 
 acter of the man. I like, he said, to discern the honorable 
 ancestry of a friend in his character and in his countenance. 
 
x Charles Woodruff Shields. 
 
 For myself, however, I must be content with a modest pedi- 
 gree which is good enough as far as it has been traced. If 
 it can boast of no crowns or coronets among its crests, yet 
 it shows no blot or bar sinister upon its shields. The name 
 itself may hint of the knightly esquire of heraldry (scutum, 
 ecuyer) ; and in fact both the Scottish and the English 
 branches of the family have borne, with differences, the 
 device of three shields upon their escutcheon. The surname 
 has even been traced far back among northern myths to Scyld 
 or Schild, father of the demigod Odin, the founder of both 
 the Norman and the Saxon dynasties of southern Europe. 
 As these two lineages became blended after the Conquest, 
 it would be easier to claim them both than to choose between 
 them. 
 
 In later times, he continues, the family was lowland 
 Scotch or northern English by turns, as the border line 
 shifted during the wars of the two kingdoms. The place 
 name is still found on both sides of the Tweed, as borne by 
 hall or hamlet at Shieldfield and Galashields near Melrose 
 Abbey and by the two seaport towns, North Shields and 
 South Shields, on the site of old Norman and Roman ruins 
 on both sides of the Tyne. To myself I seem to have lived 
 mentally in borderland, and if subconscious effects of ances- 
 try may assert themselves in one's tastes, I like to look back 
 for a historical beginning to that romantic region so cele- 
 brated in the Border Minstrelsy and so hallowed in the more 
 heroic annals of the Border Covenanters. The ballad of 
 Chevy Chase is attributed by antiquarians to " one Rychard 
 Sheale, minstrel " ; and in another old ballad the name 
 appears among the Scots with whom the Englishman was 
 
 at feud — 
 
 " And Anton Shiel, he loves not me." 
 
 When the feuds became religious as many as eighteen of 
 the name were ranked with the Presbyterian martyrs. Chief 
 among them was James Shields, a bonnet laird of Haugh 
 Head, in Lauderdale, whose two sons, Michael Shields and 
 Alexander, wielded their pens vigorously enough for Christ's 
 
A Biographical Sketch. 
 
 XI 
 
 Crown and Covenant. Michael was clerk of the Societies, 
 as the outlawed Covenanters were called, with Sir Robert 
 Hamilton for their chief, and afterwards published their 
 proceedings in a volume with the quaint title " Faithful Con- 
 tendings Displayed," from which the philosopher Sir Wil- 
 liam Hamilton has since derived proof of his claim to the 
 baronetcy. The other son, Reverend Alexander Shields, 
 had a most eventful career. Graduating from Edinburgh 
 University in 1675, he pursued his studies in Holland, re- 
 turned to England, was ordained by the Presbytery of Lon- 
 don and became amanuensis to the great non-conformist 
 divine John Owen. During the persecutions of James II he 
 was taken to Edinburgh, subjected to torture at the Tolbooth 
 and cast into the dismal prison of the Bass Rock, from which 
 he escaped in woman's clothing. He then succeeded the 
 martyred Renwick as preacher to the hunted bands of wor- 
 shippers on the moors and mountains, and issued for them 
 their " Informatory Vindication," published in Holland ; at 
 the same time publishing his own chief treatise: " Naphtali, 
 The Hind Let Loose, or An Historical Representation of the 
 Church of Scotland for the Interest of Christ." On the 
 coming of William of Orange he espoused the " revolution 
 settlement," and was made chaplain of the famous Came- 
 ronian regiment, exhorting them to the desperate battle at 
 Dunkeld, which ended in a psalm of victory. After serving 
 for ten years as minister at St. Andrew's he was appointed by 
 the General Assembly senior minister to the ill-fated Darien 
 expedition, and after severe hardships and disappointments 
 died on the homeward voyage in the island of Jamaica. " It 
 is not easy to conceive," says Macaulay, " that fanaticism 
 could be heated to a higher temperature than that which is 
 indicated by the writings of Shields. Yet there was then in 
 Scotland an enthusiasm compared with which the enthusiasm 
 of even this man was lukewarm. The extreme Covenanters 
 protested against his defection as vehemently as he had pro- 
 tested against the Black Indulgence and the oath of suprem- 
 acy." It should be added, however, that he afterward 
 
xii Charles Woodruff Shields. 
 
 showed the same moderated enthusiasm as a zealous advocate 
 of church unity in his final work entitled " An Inquiry into 
 Church Communion." 
 
 The writer of these notes firmly believed that genealogy 
 was an important part of history. It is very interesting to 
 see how much the inspiration of what men of his name and 
 his blood had done affected his own life work. The border- 
 land and marches of science, literature, and philosophy were 
 the scenes of his labors as those of conterminous kingdoms 
 had been the scenes in which his forbears had fought and 
 suffered and died for the same lofty ideals which were the 
 mainspring of his own life: ideals expressed in the nine- 
 teenth century by the unity of all learning and the unity 
 of the whole visible Christian church. 
 
 The remaining portions of these genealogical notes are 
 scarcely less interesting, although they are historical as well 
 as personal and genealogical. They are given without com- 
 ment or revision because they need neither. 
 
 IV. 
 
 In the colony of Virginia since the close of the seventeenth 
 century, there have been three distinct settlements of the 
 Shields family. They were successfully planted in eastern 
 Virginia, in the valley of Virginia, and in midland Virginia, 
 and may be located by the unquestioned authority of Hen- 
 ning in the counties of York, Augusta, and Halifax. The 
 name also appears on the map of Virginia as a place name 
 in each of these districts. 
 
 The first settlement was made probably by direct migra- 
 tion from England to the banks of the James River. This 
 branch of the family is mentioned occasionally by Bishop 
 Meade and its genealogy has been sketched by President 
 Lyon G. Tyler. It has intermarried with the families of 
 Marot, Bray, Minge, Page, Armistead, Bryan, and Tyler 
 and it became distinguished in the Reverend Samuel Shields 
 of the colonial church, in Colonel James Shields of the 
 
A Biographical Sketch. xiii 
 
 Colonial Army, in Captain John Shields of the Revolution- 
 ary Army, and more recently in Dr. William J. Shields of 
 Williamsburg and Dr. Charles H. Shields of Richmond. 
 
 The second settlement was made by emigration from 
 Scotland and north Ireland through Pennsylvania into the 
 Shenandoah Valley, where, by the liberal policy of Governor 
 Gooch, the Scotch-Irish were then finding a refuge from 
 religious persecution. I have been able to glean but little 
 information in regard to this settlement. As early as 
 1749 Thomas Shields purchased a portion of the Beverly 
 tract, two hundred acres in extent, for six shillings, agree- 
 ing to pay one ear of Indian corn on Lady Day next to 
 secure possession. There is also on record an inventory 
 made in 1750 of the estate of James Shields, full of interest- 
 ing details as to the domestic life of the time and place. 
 The will of John Shields, freeholder, is recorded in 1772, 
 naming his wife Margaret and children John, Thomas 
 Robert, Mary, William. It is probable that some members 
 of this family did military duty in the Colonial and Revolu- 
 tionary Wars, as the name occurs in the muster-rolls of 
 Colonel Lewis, of Colonel Hite and of the Muhlenburg Regi- 
 ment when it was engaged in the battles of Brandywine and 
 Germantown and encamped at Valley Forge. Beyond these 
 fragmentary items, no fuller information has been obtained 
 in regard to the Augusta County family. 
 
 Distinct from these two settlements, with no traceable 
 connection to either of them, a third Shields settlement was 
 made by migration into Virginia from the colonies of 
 Delaware and Maryland, where, as appears by the public 
 records of those States, a number of persons of the name 
 had been settled for one or two generations. As early as 
 1654 the Maryland Archives mention Robert Sheels, and in 
 1689 Thomas Shields, and in 1694 John Shields. There 
 are also recorded wills in Queen Anne County of Catherine 
 Shields, 171 7; and of Susanna Shields, 1735; in Talbot 
 County of James Shields, 1759; in Somerset County of 
 Elizabeth Shields, 1766; in Frederick County of Elizabeth 
 
xiv Charles Woodruff Shields. 
 
 Shields, 1769, and in Newcastle County, Delaware, of 
 Robert Shields, 1796. The Maryland muster-rolls of the 
 Revolutionary Army contain the names of Lieutenant Archi- 
 bald Shields, Lieutenant Caleb Shields, Captain John 
 Shields, Commissary Edward Shields and Privates James, 
 John, Patrick, and William Shields. 
 
 These persons were probably of Scottish or Irish origin 
 and naturally Episcopalian ; in connection with the estab- 
 lished church of the colony. Of some of them but little has 
 as yet been ascertained, but it is positively known that about 
 the middle of the eighteenth century two brothers, Archibald 
 and Thomas Shields, of Delaware, married two sisters, 
 Rebecca and Anne Bayard, daughters of Samuel Bayard of 
 Bohemia Manor, Maryland, from whom are also derived 
 the distinguished Bayards of Delaware and New Jersey. 
 The descendants of Archibald Shields have been widely 
 scattered throughout the Southern States: among them is 
 the Honorable William Bayard Shields of the United States 
 Court, New Orleans, La., who married Victoire Benoist, 
 daughter of a French Catholic refugee. The grandsons 
 were Thomas Rodney Shields, William Bayard Shields, the 
 Honorable Joseph Dunbar Shields of Natchez, Miss., and 
 Gabriel Benoist Shields. The great-grandsons are the Rev- 
 erend VanWinder Shields, D. D., Rector of St. John's 
 Church, Jacksonville, Fla., and Dr. W. B. Shields of St. 
 Francis, Arkansas. 
 
 The other brother, Thomas Shields, who married Anne 
 Bayard, afterwards settled in Virginia. Among his descend- 
 ants are Colonel John Shields of Poplar Vale, Va., who 
 married Anna Jane Moncure, daughter of a certain Mr. 
 Robinson; also Lieutenant Wilmer Shields, U. S. N., who 
 was son of Purser Thomas Shields, and married Julia 
 Devereux Scott. Also, Wilmer Shields, who married Eliza 
 Runkle, daughter of Captain Thomas Conway of Pittsyl- 
 vania County, Va. To these should be added James Shields, 
 ;on of the first Thomas, who was born near Sassafras River 
 in Delaware, married Elizabeth Graham of Christiana, and 
 
A Biographical Sketch. xv 
 
 migrated to Halifax, now Pittsylvania Co., Va., where his 
 family was seated until the Revolutionary War. 
 
 At this point it will be interesting to notice the influence 
 of environment as well as heredity, upon family character. 
 During the latter part of the eighteenth century the com- 
 munity dwelling between tide-water and the mountains on 
 the east side of the Blue Ridge was as intermediate in its 
 characteristics as in its situation. Therein were blended the 
 social and religious elements of the eastern and western col- 
 onists. It should be remembered that in contrast with the 
 Puritan of New England, both the Covenanter and the Cav- 
 alier of Virginia had been Royalists, devoted to the house of 
 Stuart, and also zealous Churchmen, the one attached to 
 Presbytery and the other to Episcopacy. When united under 
 William of Orange, they had settled their ecclesiastical feud 
 by establishing the Presbyterian Church in Scotland and the 
 Episcopal Church in England. And not long afterwards in 
 the New World they found themselves again neighbors with 
 only the Blue Ridge between them ; but with new common 
 interests taking the place of the old border warfare. The 
 tolerance granted to the Presbyterian Churchmen of midland 
 Virginia was altogether creditable to the colonial govern- 
 ors : it had already ample legal precedent in the mother 
 country as well as in Virginia law, and there was really 
 nothing now to prevent the free intercourse and fusion of 
 the two races and creeds. The product was a type of Vir- 
 ginian, distinguishable alike from the luxurious planter of 
 the lowlands and from the hardy freeholder of the uplands, 
 yet retaining much that was best in both of these stocks with- 
 out their defects and vices. 
 
 This commingling of the two strains showed itself not 
 only in the inherited traits of individuals and families, but 
 also in certain affinities and interchanges which have long 
 since been forgotten or but seldom noticed. It is a remark- 
 able fact that some great political leaders like Madison, 
 Light-horse Harry Lee and even Randolph of Roanoke were 
 not educated at William and Mary, but at Nassau Hall in 
 
xvi Charles Woodruff Shields. 
 
 the school of statesmanship founded by the patriotic Wither- 
 spoon. It is a no less remarkable fact that Princeton Col- 
 lege instead of looking to New England for Presidents such 
 as Dickinson, Burr, and Edwards, now summoned from Vir- 
 ginia the eloquent Davies, who was Patrick Henry's model, 
 the accomplished Stanhope Smith, who was President of 
 Hampden-Sydney, and Dr. Archibald Alexander, also Presi- 
 dent of Hampden-Sydney, and founder of the Princeton 
 School of Divinity. Thus it was that the seeds of old civili- 
 zations as transplanted to a new soil, flowered into a new 
 form of culture as strong as it was graceful. 
 
 Besides this difference between eastern and western Vir- 
 ginia, there was a still further difference of social atmos- 
 phere between the northern and southern sections of mid- 
 land Virginia. 
 
 It may not be easily explained, but it appeared in the im- 
 passioned genius of Patrick Henry and John Randolph as 
 :ompared with the trained statesmanship of Jefferson and 
 Madison. It appeared still more strongly in the Presby- 
 :erian College in Prince Edward as contrasted with the 
 iberal University afterwards founded at Charlottesville. 
 \nd it also appeared in the gradual decline of the Cavalier 
 ind Episcopal elements in the southern counties. It would 
 ieem that these counties, after having been devastated by two 
 :ivil wars and drained of their best blood by emigration to 
 he Western States, now retain but little of their former pres- 
 ige. Bishop Meade in his day lamented the extinction of the 
 Ihurch throughout this region and remarked that the names 
 if such churchmen as Madison, Henry, Read, Carington, 
 Vatkins, Venable are no longer to be found in the vestry- 
 ecords of parishes though enrolled among the trustees of 
 iampden-Sydney College. John Randolph bitterly deplored 
 he decay of the gentry in the county of Charlotte where he 
 ved, attributing its degeneracy to the attacks of Jefferson 
 pon the church establishment and the law of primogeniture, 
 "he old regime, however, still lingered some time after the 
 devolution. Dr. James W. Alexander depicted it as it 
 
A Biographical Sketch. xvii 
 
 existed in his father's time. There is no portion of the State 
 or country where the bright side of the planter's life is more 
 agreeably exhibited. The district has always been remark- 
 able for its adaptation to the culture of a particular variety of 
 tobacco which usually commands high prices, and it has 
 therefore abounded in slaves, although the estates are less 
 extensive than in the cotton districts of the remote South. 
 The proprietors enjoy the comforts and luxuries of life in 
 a high degree, and almost every family has some man of 
 liberal education within its bosom. Hospitality and genial 
 warmth may be said to be universal. Nowhere in the South 
 has the Presbyterian Church had greater strength among 
 the wealthy and cultivated classes. Dr. William Henry 
 Foote skilfully traces the same society to its sources and 
 elements : " Coming from different divisions of the European 
 stock, mingling in society on the frontiers, amalgamating 
 by marriage, moulded by the religious teachings of Robinson 
 and Davies, they formed a state of society and morals in 
 which the excellencies of the original constituent parts have 
 all been preserved. The courtly manners of Williamsburg, 
 the cheerfulness and ease of the Huguenots, the honest 
 frankness and stern independence of the English country 
 gentleman, the activity and shrewdness of the merchant, the 
 simplicity of republican life — all have been preserved." 
 
 Into this frontier region in 1757 came certain members 
 of the Shields family of Delaware through Maryland down 
 the Chesapeake Bay. The first of the name on record was 
 Patrick Shields, of the County of Halifax and Colony of 
 Virginia, planter, who for two hundred and twenty-five 
 pounds purchased twelve hundred and sixty acres of rich 
 tobacco-growing land on Sandy River, next to Colonel 
 Byrd's tract, the " Land of Eden," and not far from Leather- 
 wood, the purchase of Patrick Henry. During his lifetime 
 he deeded portions of this land to his children Samuel, 
 James, John, and Elizabeth Read, and by his will, September 
 22nd, 1770, he bequeathed his own plantation to his wife 
 Jeane and son Joseph, together with a negro servant Phyllis 
 
xviii Charles Woodruff Shields. 
 
 and a roan mare and colt ; also 50 pounds to his son Robert, 
 and 10 pounds to his " grandson Patrick and son of Samuel." 
 The will is conventional in form, beginning with a confession 
 of his Christian faith in the doctrine of the resurrection. 
 
 The next interesting record nine years afterwards is 
 another will so much briefer that I will cite the whole of it : 
 
 In the name of God, Amen. I, James Shields, of Pitt- 
 sylvania County, Virginia, being in perfect health, mind, and 
 memory, do constitute, make and ordain this my last will 
 and testament in manner and form following : 
 
 And first of all my lawful debts to be paid. And to my 
 beloved wife Elizabeth I give and bequeath her third of 
 my estate, and to my son Patrick I give and bequeath the 
 other third of my real and personal estate, and to Molly my 
 daughter the other part. I also will and desire that my son 
 Patrick over and above his share have so much to be paid 
 from my estate as will pay his learning through the several 
 degrees of the college : and I do hereby constitute my beloved 
 wife my whole and sole executrix of this my last will and 
 testament, and do hereby revoke, disallow and annul all for- 
 mer will or wills whatsoever, and do make and confirm this 
 only to be my last will and testament. As witness my hand 
 and seal this third day of August in the year one thousand 
 seven hundred and seventy-nine. 
 
 And as my wife is with child if the child lives I desire that 
 it may have its due and equal share of my estate. 
 
 James Shields (L. S.). 
 Teste 
 
 John Smith, 
 
 Samuel Shields, 
 
 Joshua Cantrill. 
 
 This document, brought to light after a lapse of one hun- 
 dred and twenty-five years, is a remarkable confirmation of 
 family tradition in every particular. It was evidently writ- 
 ten somewhat hurriedly, in view of the fate which might 
 
A Biographical Sketch. xix 
 
 befall a soldier of the Revolution. One may fancy him ten- 
 derly leaving the paper with his wife, as he rode away never 
 to return. The disastrous siege of Savannah followed on 
 October ioth, and the will was probated December 21st, 
 1779. The executrix and "beloved wife Elizabeth" was 
 the above-named Elizabeth Graham of Christiana. 
 
 In reference to the family of Elizabeth Graham some 
 traditions may here be interesting. Her father, a Coven- 
 anter as well as a Graham, had narrowly escaped the sword 
 thrust of another Graham before he fled to the Colonies. 
 The story runs in the family that the dragoons of bloody 
 Claverhouse thrust their swords into the very thicket in 
 which he was concealed, but without discovering him. He 
 crossed the sea in the same ship with the family into which 
 his daughter afterwards married. The two families before 
 their emigration, it is said, lived on opposite sides of the Irish 
 Channel where it was so narrow that they could tell when it 
 was washing day on the other shore by descrying the clothes 
 hung to dry. It is also said that Graham on settling in 
 Delaware built his house in part of bricks brought with him 
 in the vessel and marked with his initials, and as late as 1821 
 Senator Tipton, a friend of the family, reported that he had 
 seen the house and noticed the initials. Beyond such home- 
 like traditions there are no European annals of Elizabeth's 
 family. Her little, worn Bible which she bequeathed to the 
 oldest son of the oldest son, because of its register showing 
 title to Scottish properties, has come to her great-grandson, 
 water-stained, tattered, and alas, without the register. It 
 was accidentally dropped into a stream which was being 
 forded by another ancestor on one of his preaching excur- 
 sions. The lost pedigree might have helped to decide 
 whether she came from the Grahams of Menteith, or of the 
 Grahams of Montrose, who boasted of the handsome and 
 gallant Dundee, as much praised by the Cavaliers as he was 
 hated by the Covenanters. 
 
 But to return to the will. The unborn child proved to be 
 another daughter. Left alone with three young children 
 
XX 
 
 Charles Woodruff Shields. 
 
 and in charge of a plantation, Elizabeth Graham Shields 
 married a neighboring planter, General Burnett, whose name 
 was gratefully given to one of her grandsons, Henry Bur- 
 nett Shields. Her two daughters married husbands who 
 rose to wealth and public office in Tennessee. Her son 
 Patrick, so thoughtfully provided for in the will, became 
 Judge Shields of Corydon, Indiana. He was born in Pitt- 
 sylvania, May 17th, 1773. His boyhood was passed in the 
 Virginia plantation mode of life with the church and school 
 at home and in a neighborhood then exceptionally good. 
 Dr. Archibald Alexander thus notices it in his Journal: 
 " Tuesday, August 7th, 1792, I preached at Sandy River. 
 The house was very full of people who seemed desirous to 
 hear. I don't remember that any to whom I have preached 
 since I was on my tour were apparently more affected than 
 these." One of these listeners may have been young Patrick, 
 then nineteen years old. In accordance with his father's 
 will he was educated for the law in Hampden-Sydney 
 Academy and William and Mary College. 
 
 To his uncle's name Patrick his parents had added the 
 name Henry in compliment to their intimate friend the 
 patriot orator, but in after life he preferred to write his name 
 simply " P. Shields." I have, however, official documents 
 signed " P. Henry Shields." The boy was educated care- 
 fully, according to his father's directions. At one time 
 William Henry Harrison, the future President, was his class- 
 mate and thus became his lifelong friend. On the sixth 
 of December, 1798, he was married to Mary, daughter of 
 Rev. Clement Nance, by his cousin Rev. James Read. The 
 Nances were an old Virginia family, first seated as early as 
 1 64 1 in Henrico County, from thence migrating into other 
 counties and intermarrying through successive generations 
 with Isham, Vaughn, Lanier, Giles, Palmer, and Pleasant. 
 After the Revolution Clement Nance removed with his 
 family to the Northwest Territory. It was not long before 
 his son-in-law decided to follow him, drawn into the general 
 westward movement. 
 
A Biographical Sketch. xxi 
 
 His father's estate, which was valued at seventeen thousand 
 pounds, having- become depreciated through the failure of the 
 Continental currency, he surrendered the home plantation to 
 his mother and sisters and accepted as his portion two thou- 
 sand six hundred and sixty acres of wild land in the Elue 
 Grass region of Kentucky, which was then still the County 
 or District of Virginia. About the year 1803, with his wife, 
 two young children, and a negro servant, Sam, and doubtless 
 other emigrating families, he made the long and difficult 
 journey over the mountains into Kentucky. On arriving 
 at Lexington he found that owing to the dishonesty of a 
 business agent, made easy enough by the chaotic state of 
 land titles at that time, he was unable to secure possession of 
 his land and must simply begin the world anew. For a 
 time he remained with some of his Graham connections in 
 Mercer County, but at length he decided to join his wife's 
 relatives beyond the Ohio River, where land was more easily 
 obtained. 
 
 With his family, household goods, and cattle in a flatboat, 
 he floated down the Kentucky and Ohio rivers to a point 
 below the Falls where his relatives, having seen the boat 
 approaching, were waiting to welcome him after the long 
 separation with hysterical tears of joy. In the unbroken 
 wilderness he entered a section of land ; this time with no 
 flaw upon the title. Upon my study wall now hangs the 
 parchment deed to this tract signed by President Monroe as 
 recorded in the general land office at Washington. Here 
 with the aid of his servant was cleared the first patch of 
 ground in the wilderness and the first crop of grain was 
 raised only to be destroyed by severe frost in autumn. A 
 local chronicler describes the cabin which he erected as much 
 better than those of that time: " It was built almost entirely 
 of blue ash logs and nearly full two stories in height. 
 Shields in a short time gathered around him a settlement 
 of some size and wielded considerable influence among the 
 settlers." His spacious cabin being the most commodious 
 in the neighborhood became almost a public resort, the place 
 
xxii Charles Woodruff Shields. 
 
 where political and religious meetings were held. It was 
 also for a time the seat of the Territorial authorities until the 
 government was established in the neighboring village of 
 Corydon. The building was in due time replaced by a more 
 commodious brick building, styled by the ruder settlers — 
 the folly of " stuck-up " Virginians. 
 
 There is no doubt that Shields was the pioneer of all that 
 band of Virginians, a score or more of families that sub- 
 sequently followed his lead and became citizens of this town- 
 ship. He was soon, on December 8th, 1808, commissioned by 
 his old classmate Governor William Henry Harrison as judge 
 of the Court of Common Pleas, the first appointment of this 
 kind for the territory, which then included the region since 
 divided into the States of Indiana, Michigan, and Illinois. 
 In 181 1 he went to the defence of the border with General 
 Harrison as a mounted rifleman and volunteer aide. In the 
 battle of Tippecanoe his horse received a bullet in the head, 
 but was not killed and was safely brought back home with 
 him again. When Indiana became a separate territory 
 under Governor Posey, January 7th, 18 14, he was com- 
 missioned judge of the Circuit Court of Harrison County, 
 the first president judge in that territory; and in the year 
 18 1 6 he was appointed a member of the Constitutional Con- 
 vention which met at Corydon for the organization of the 
 Territory into a State. 
 
 These pages were written by Dr. Shields in his seventy- 
 ninth year and amply suffice to show that his force was not 
 in the least abated. Their interest is far from being either 
 personal or local, for they are a contribution to American 
 history as showing the sources of the strength and culture 
 characteristic of many small but vigorous communities 
 through the central and further West. Though life was 
 very primitive in Corydon, Indiana, the people had as their 
 leaders men of the first importance from the viewpoint of 
 
A Biographical Sketch. xxiii 
 
 education, family, and energy. As the years went on and 
 material prosperity blessed the efforts of the pioneers, they 
 gave the same attention to their intellectual and spiritual 
 necessities as they gave to their bodies and their estates. 
 Churches and schools were established on firm foundations, 
 their sons and daughters were trained in piety and patriotism. 
 When James Read Shields, son of Patrick Henry, came to 
 man's estate he sought and found a wife among the best and 
 most refined families of the East. Being president of the 
 bank of New Albany in the State of his birth, and a ruling 
 elder in the Presbyterian church of the same town, he mar- 
 ried Hannah Woodruff of Elizabethtown, New Jersey. 
 
 This was the fact which determined the career of the only 
 child of the marriage, who was born on April fourth of the 
 following year at his father's home in New Albany. The 
 ancestors of Hannah Woodruff for four generations on both 
 sides lie buried in the graveyard of the First Presbyterian 
 Church of Elizabeth. They were descendants of a well- 
 known Yorkshire family, which emigrated to Massachusetts 
 in 1638, went thence to Southampton, Long Island, and with 
 a number of others removed thence to the Carteret district 
 of New Jersey. They were a line of devout Presbyterian 
 church folk. Mrs. Shields was trained in the " nurture and 
 admonition of the Lord " as her parents understood it, and 
 her well-worn books of devotion were a cherished possession 
 of her son. She is well remembered by the present distin- 
 guished Chancellor of the State, William J. Magie, who 
 recalls that she was a famous Bible scholar. Her pastor, 
 the Rev. John McDowell, D. D., a Princeton graduate of 
 1 80 1, and a founder of the Princeton Seminary, received into 
 the church the grandmother of Dr. Shields and, by both 
 baptism and confession, his mother: he likewise delivered 
 the charge at the installation of her son as a minister, and 
 baptized his oldest daughter. 
 
 Samuel Woodruff, one of the same family, had long 
 since identified the family with the interests of Princeton 
 College, an institution founded to represent the religious 
 
xxiv Charles Woodruff Shields. 
 
 culture which, by a larger catholicity, had outgrown the con- 
 servative type from which it had sprung. He was a trustee 
 from its founding in 1749 to his death in 1768, and is the 
 first to have remembered that institution by a bequest. He 
 was a prosperous merchant and a pillar of the church. In 
 the founding of the college he was, of course, intimately 
 associated with all the leading spirits of the time and place, 
 in particular with Boudinot, Stockton, and Belcher the gov- 
 ernor of the province, he himself being a member of the 
 Council. The society from which the founders of Princeton 
 stood forth had a marked character, being both aristocratic 
 in feeling and ecclesiastical in its standards. Dr. Shields 
 wrote of it in this connection, as follows : " Between the ex- 
 tremes of Northern and Southern culture, it laid stress upon 
 forms, and titles, and costumes, while insisting on the claims 
 of virtue and piety. There was in it a touch of English 
 gentility over the harshness of the Puritan, the strictness 
 of the Covenanter, the staidness of the Hollander, the prim- 
 ness of the Quaker, the grace of the Huguenot, and the 
 gayety of the Cavalier. At one time, indeed, all these ele- 
 ments seemed to have been fused together under the elo- 
 quence of that Presbyterian clergyman of the Church of 
 England, George Whitefield, who was then traversing the 
 colonies, like another Apostle to the Gentiles. The Rev- 
 erend Mr. Chandler, Missionary to the little flock of St. 
 John, wrote home to the London Society in disgust, that 
 schism was becoming a mere " ecclesiastical scarecrow," 
 churchmen and dissenters being so mixed up together 
 that they would not discriminate between " Episcopal and 
 ye leathern mitted ordination " which his neighbor, the Rev- 
 erend Jonathan Dickinson, had been defending in sundry 
 learned essays. The preceding rector, good old Mr. Vaugn, 
 had died on the same day with Dickinson, exclaiming, when 
 told that his friend was also dying, " Oh, that I had hold 
 of the skirts of brother Jonathan! " This passage has been 
 quoted because, in its literal truth, the writer was holding up 
 the mirror for himself as a sitter for his own portrait. 
 
A Biographical Sketch. xxv 
 
 Dr. Shields was in a marked degree what inheritance 
 made him, a man of exactly this social and ecclesiastical 
 mould. 
 
 In response to a request for a few intimate details concern- 
 ing the mother whose influence was almost paramount in 
 her father's life, Mrs. Stockton, of Morven, writes: 
 
 My grandmother's marriage was looked upon by her 
 large family connection, then living in Elizabethtown and 
 New York, as cutting her off entirely from her family and 
 almost from civilization, and so it was natural that my 
 father should have been sent to her sister, Phebe (Wood- 
 ruff) Rankin, in Newark, to be educated. 
 
 New Albany, where my father lived in 1837, was a very 
 primitive place at that time; the first Presbyterian church, 
 and the different clergymen who supplied its pulpit, were 
 the only social interests of the town. My grandmother, 
 although of English descent, was much more the type of a 
 Scotch Presbyterian, and my father has often told me of the 
 breakfasts his mother used to give to the visiting clergymen, 
 a custom still quite common in Scotland. 
 
 She also held " parlor meetings," or ladies' prayer-meet- 
 ings, at her house on Main Street, which had a beautiful 
 garden running down to the Ohio River, " planted with 
 borders and shrubberies," of which my grandmother took 
 personal care. 
 
 My grandfather has left this description of her, which he 
 wrote for his eldest granddaughter : 
 
 " She was a little below the ordinary size of women, well 
 favored and straight in her person. Her forehead high, 
 her features good, complexion fair, with a well-shaped nose 
 resting between her gray or hazel eyes — her countenance 
 on the whole was that of serenity and sense, attractive to 
 all, being entirely destitute of that doll-faced beauty that 
 is so prominent in the features of many women ; one 
 look at her invited a second and then a third ; she was 
 rather retiring and modest in her deportment; she rose 
 early, delighted much in flowers, and employed her leisure 
 
xxvi Charles Woodruff Shields. 
 
 moments in reading. The Bible was her first book, then 
 the religious books and papers of the day. She was mild 
 and amiable in disposition, and very kind to those who came 
 within reach of her acquaintance; very conscientious in the 
 discharge of her duties to God and her fellow beings, be- 
 nevolent to the poor and the church ; cheerful, but not given 
 to levity. 
 
 " For upwards of thirty years we lived together in peace, 
 sharing in each other's joys and sorrows until the evening 
 of August 21st, 1856, when she ceased to be with me." 
 
 After her death it was found that she had treasured every 
 letter her only child had ever written her, and even those 
 from her own people in which his name was mentioned. 
 
 In contrast to the austere life led by my grandmother 
 in the West, I quote from a letter written at Elizabethtown 
 in the first year of her marriage. " We have had a visit from 
 Lafayette, and a most splendid bower was erected for his 
 reception ; I blistered my hands tying greens for it, but it 
 paid with the honor of shaking hands with the general. 
 Hannah ! he looks very much like Mr. Nelson, on the hill, 
 so you can fancy you have seen him; our bower, it is said, 
 stands next to Castle Garden (the port on the battery) ; I 
 was in it one evening, previous to his arrival, and it really 
 appeared like enchantment ; it is, Hannah, indescribable ; I 
 have just finished his memoirs, which have been published 
 since his arrival here. They are very interesting." 
 
 My father was baptized by the Reverend M. R. Welles, 
 pastor of the Presbyterian Church. His early childhood 
 was very lonely ; his mother was his only companion as well 
 as teacher. When he was three years old, he read the first 
 chapter of St. John's Gospel at her knee. He had many 
 salutary lessons from her. As he has somewhere written 
 he began during this time to write a journal of resolu- 
 tions and penitential confessions, such as he had read in the 
 memoirs of some precocious young saint of the day. But 
 his wise mother, pointing out its marks of conceit and vanity, 
 promptly suppressed the effusion. These lonely days play- 
 
A Biographical Sketch. xxvii 
 
 ing by her side in the sunny garden readily account for his 
 shyness and reserve. He had no playmates until he went 
 to school in Newark in 1837. 
 
 In 1839 he and two of his schoolmates owned a small 
 printing press, and for a few months " The Aurora," a 
 monthly paper, Printed, Published and Edited by Shields, 
 Butler & Co., was the fruit of their leisure hours. This 
 child's paper was largely subscribed for by " The Aunts " 
 living in the East, and its poetical effusions were contributed 
 by the young ladies of the neighborhood. 
 
 My father's maternal grandmother, Mary (Mulford) 
 Woodruff, daughter of Lewis Mulford III and wife of Par- 
 sons Woodruff, was much interested in his spiritual welfare ; 
 in 1838 she writes : " Give Charles my love and tell him that 
 I was much gratified to see that he was attending to so many 
 studies, and especially the Bible class. I hope he will be 
 thankful that his parents can give him so good an education, 
 which is the best of gifts." When she was told that he had 
 joined the Presbyterian Church in 1841, and was to be sent 
 to college, she writes: "I think there is a blessing that 
 attended you that your child should be brought out of nat- 
 ural darkness. I hope he will press forward to the prize of 
 the high calling. I feel gratified to have one of my grand- 
 children a professional character." 
 
 She lived until she was eighty-five, and kept constantly in 
 touch with her grandson. He was expected to pay his re- 
 spects to her on coming and going to college. In 1843 she 
 writes again : " Professor McLean called here during the 
 vacation. I told him I thought Charles would be home-sick, 
 as he never had been away from home. He said if he 
 was he would send him on to spend a few days with us, 
 but as he did not come we concluded he is very well 
 contented." 
 
 While my father was in the seminary she writes: " You 
 wish to know what we think of Charles; we are all very 
 much pleased with his visit. He has improved greatly in 
 regard to his diffidence; you will no doubt be pleased to hear 
 
xxviii Charles Woodruff Shields. 
 
 that he asked a blessing at the table with perfect confidence, 
 while Mr. Wood and Mr. Millpaugh were both present." 
 
 My father's letters gave detailed accounts of his holidays 
 spent with his aunt, Mrs. Rankin, his uncle, Archibald 
 Woodruff, at whose " establishment in Newark " his grand- 
 mother lived after her husband's death, and in New York, 
 at 20 Spring Street, with his aunt, Charity Wood, of whom 
 he was very fond. 
 
 VI. 
 
 Having been a diligent student at the New Albany high 
 school, the boy of twelve was quite ready for better training 
 than New Albany could afford. Accordingly his education 
 was not interrupted by his entrance on the work of the 
 Newark Academy, already a famous school. Four years 
 sufficed to prepare him for Princeton, as a sophomore at 
 least, and possibly a junior. The summer of 1842 he spent 
 at home, and on October 31 he started for the college, already 
 so dear to him, in company with two friends. From this 
 time onward, for some years, his letters to his mother and 
 other relatives contained many things of general interest. 
 He traveled by boat to Wheeling, thence by stage to Harper's 
 Ferry, Washington, and Baltimore, and thence by train to 
 Philadelphia, and Princeton, which he reached on November 
 9. The cost of this journey was thirty-three dollars and six 
 cents. The careful accounting is characteristic. 
 
 Presenting himself as a candidate for the junior class, he 
 was examined by Vice-President McLean and Professor 
 Topping. They found him, for so high a standing, deficient 
 in the languages, and advised him to enter the sophomore 
 class; but as they did not forbid him trying to join the 
 higher one he concluded so to do, and easily made good all 
 deficiencies. His college bill was a hundred and six dollars 
 and eight cents ; this he paid immediately and further bought 
 furniture costing fourteen dollars. He then established him- 
 self with his friend, Walter Mann, at No. 20 East College, 
 and was ready for the work and play of college life. 
 
A Biographical Sketch. xxix 
 
 As might be expected from one of his birth and training 
 his first impressions of Princeton relate to its religious char- 
 acter. More than a third of the students, he wrote, are 
 professors of religion, and many others are seriously dis- 
 posed. The religious restraint cast around them is very 
 great. Beside daily prayers in the chapel there are also 
 nightly prayer-meetings, conducted by some of the faculty 
 and pious students, lectures on Monday evenings, Bible 
 lessons, etc., etc. Within less than three weeks he had him- 
 self joined the Philadelphian Society, and had signed a con- 
 stitution drawn up in the handwriting of James B. Taylor, 
 who. in his own words, was the founder and chief member 
 of the society — a society, it may be remarked in passing, 
 which was the forerunner and almost the parent of all the 
 numerous religious associations of students in American 
 colleges. Further, the students were not permitted to leave 
 the grounds on a Sunday, except by special dispensation. 
 
 The routine of his life is graphically described : A little 
 after six in the morning we have what is called a " rouser," 
 a term most significant of its use. It consists of a most 
 melodious concert of bells and horns (one of the latter is 
 blown in each entry of the different colleges) together with 
 the howling of neighboring dogs by way of a symphony. 
 This should effectually rouse most of the students, it would 
 seem ; I have slept through it once, notwithstanding. After 
 a half an hour for dressing the college bell rings for prayers. 
 At prayer-hall the roll is called, delinquents marked, a 
 chapter read, and a prayer made by one of the tutors. At 
 eight we go to breakfast. Study hours are nine to eleven, 
 recitation till twelve, and so on for the remainder of the day. 
 The students generally walk after evening prayers till supper, 
 and we have some beautiful walks. Professor McLean's 
 prayer-meeting (comes) immediately after supper, Thurs- 
 day evenings a lecture at Dr. Rice's church from either him- 
 self, Professor McLean or Alexander alternately( ?) in the 
 sophomore recitation room, which we of course attend. 
 After prayer-meeting Walter and I trim our study lamp and 
 
xxx Charles Woodruff Shields. 
 
 seat ourselves by a good grate fire to study. The sermons 
 we have in prayer-hall are of a strange order. It is a diffi- 
 cult thing to please the students, and some of the professors 
 seem to bend their efforts to obviate this difficulty. What 
 would you think of a grave metaphysical discourse (Dr. 
 Hodge of the Seminary) on the " existence of the Deity " ? 
 A sermon (Professor Dod) on the best method of study? 
 
 Throughout these and all his letters there is constant and 
 tender mention of home affairs, with never ending expres- 
 sions of affection. His first examination closed on January 
 28th, 1843. He felt some uneasiness as to gaining distinc- 
 tion in mathematics, and he did not. There is mention of 
 his regular reading of the " Observer " and the " Presbyte- 
 rian " : also of careful study in " Alexander's Evidences " 
 and " Locke's Essay." His time, he found, was almost en- 
 grossed by his studies, and by the constant, faithful per- 
 formance of his religious duties. 
 
 A letter of September 2nd, 1843, ' s vei T interesting: I 
 have become attached to study, he writes. What in the 
 first place necessity imposed, habit has consented to, and 
 fastened upon me. The natural offspring of this is a thirst 
 after truth. We juniors are now beginning to come in 
 possession of the seniors' peculiar privileges. We have 
 a lecture in the morning (of which we are obliged to take 
 notes, and which we are obliged to transcribe neatly in a 
 large blank-book, together with drawings and illustrations, 
 to be subjected to the supervision of the professor) and in 
 the afternoon a recitation upon it. The last week we had 
 Professor Dod on architecture. He is a splendid lecturer and 
 has, besides his class, an audience of the ladies and gentle- 
 men from out in the town. I have been delighted with the 
 subject, and especially with the method in which he presents 
 it. I do not believe that, in aptness and facility of utterance, 
 there is his equal in the United States. He completely 
 carries you away and makes you feel like another being, 
 even on such a plaything as architecture. Oh, two sermons 
 which I have heard from him this session, I can never forget ! 
 
A Biographical Sketch. xxxi 
 
 They have sunk into my heart. He is the greatest man that 
 e\ er came under my personal observation. He has his mind 
 completely under control — can do with it what he pleases, 
 and it is remarkable that he never fails of making his sen- 
 tences intelligible, is never confused and indistinct in his 
 words, has neither too many nor too few, even when most 
 hurried and dealing with most abstract subjects. He has pre- 
 ciseness of ideas — preciseness of utterance; and complete 
 mastery over his mind to a degree as near to perfection as 
 I can imagine. The wonder is -that such a man would be 
 content to be cooped up in the little village of Princeton. 
 
 In another letter he thus characterizes Dr. John McLean : 
 " He is all benevolence. He has a soul large enough to take 
 in the whole world ; although most severe in his administra- 
 tion of college discipline he has not an enemy among the 
 students. They all go to him as an adviser and friend. He 
 always gives them his private reproof and warning before 
 he proceeds to more rigorous measures. He is a complete 
 exemplification of the Christian, and labors more assiduously 
 and conscientiously than any other member of the faculty 
 for the spiritual good of those who are under his instruc- 
 tions. As to his success in his professorship I cannot speak 
 so favorably, I am really afraid my knowledge of Greek is 
 not very much brightened by my college course." 
 
 The industry of the man, and the opportunities for educa- 
 tion which he enjoyed in Princeton at that time, are well 
 illustrated by his enumeration of the studies he pursued in 
 and out of college : his class-room work in mathematics in- 
 cluded mechanics, analytical geometry, differential and in- 
 tegral calculus, and the contents of Olmsted's text-book of 
 astronomy; in the classics he read the Captivi of Plautus, 
 Juvenal and the GEdipus Tyrannus ; and with these he had 
 instruction in the Evidences, and in Locke's Essay, together 
 with lectures on architecture. He had also private lessons 
 in elocution and French. The spring holiday he spent in 
 Newark, where his mother was visiting with her family, and 
 in September he returned to New Albany to pass the autumn 
 
xxxii Charles Woodruff Shields. 
 
 holiday at home. His expenses for the year were three 
 hundred and fifty-three dollars and twelve cents. 
 
 The senior year was begun by the purchase of a sylla- 
 bus of Professor Henry's lectures, Brande's Encyclopedia, 
 Hedge's Logic, and Blair's Rhetoric. The holidays were 
 spent in New York and Newark respectively; he graduated 
 on July 27th, 1844, and returned home by way of Niagara. 
 His expenses for the year were three hundred and eighty- 
 one dollars and fifty-four cents. 
 
 The letters he wrote during this period glow with a warm 
 affection for Princeton, and express a high appreciation of 
 the advantages he there enjoyed. They likewise exhibit the 
 heart-searchings of a generous mind and of a manhood de- 
 voted to duty, and scanning the future to find its leadings. 
 On the subject of his opportunities in different lines he wrote 
 at various times with keen discrimination. Toward the 
 close of the year he declared : " I can truly say that no portion 
 of my life has been to me so pleasant as that which I have 
 spent at college. The friendships formed there are like no 
 Dthers — they are between equals, all have the same object in 
 view, and the same end to strive after ; and, therefore, they 
 are purer and freer from those temptations which an inter- 
 course with the world is likely to produce. In fact, I have 
 lever known before what it was to have a real friend and to 
 separate from him. I mean, of course, such a companion 
 is similar tastes and a common interest endear to us. I 
 lave really become attached to Princeton. As the days of 
 ny sojourn draw to a close, and I recount the pleasant 
 riendships which I have formed, I feel confident I shall 
 eave with regret." 
 
 During this year young Shields was managing editor of 
 he Nassau Literary Magazine, and took the Alpha medal 
 or an essay in connection with other literary work in Whig 
 iall. Chapel exercises were at five in the morning during 
 ummer, and he allowed himself but six hours of sleep, such 
 vas his untiring zeal in the performance of the many tasks 
 /hich gave him such a full and fruitful life. In one of his 
 
A Biographical Sketch. xxxiii 
 
 letters he thus describes his room : " Imagine, then, after hav- 
 ing deposited carefully the dirt upon a respectable mat at the 
 door, and having received in response to your knock a couple 
 of simultaneous ' holloas ' from within, you step upon a 
 neat carpeted floor — please sit down — I must apologize for 
 the dilapidated appearance of that chair — it lost its rockers 
 and one of its arms one rainy morning in a desperate exi- 
 gency of kindling-wood — be cautious how you trust your- 
 self in that other one — its limbs are relaxing with the feeble- 
 ness of old age — however, there is that other remaining one 
 which I can recommend to you as trustworthy. Having 
 given you the necessary precautions for your safety, you may 
 now proceed in your examination with nothing to molest 
 you. You see that double cylinder stove before you. It 
 is a very convenient, economical affair, with its set of damp- 
 ers to regulate the temperature, only addicted to a curious 
 habit of letting the fire go out once or twice daily. This 
 will lead you readily to account for that hill of short wood 
 you see behind it. In the southeast corner you observe a 
 collection of old umbrellas, bandysticks, old shoes, broom, 
 etc., etc." ; and so he runs on for a page or two with his 
 enumeration of collected rubbish. 
 
 There were sixty-seven members in the class, and among 
 them were many destined to be famous in after life: James 
 C. Welling, president of Columbian, now George Washing- 
 ton, University in the national capital ; the Hon. H. S. Little, 
 of Trenton; Col. Edward A. Wright, of Newark, N. J., 
 Governor A. H. Colquit, of Georgia; the Rev. Noah H. 
 Schenck.of Brooklyn, and in the seminary Bishop Littlejohn, 
 of Long Island. Charles Godfrey Leland, though in the class 
 of 1845, was his warm friend. From the entire number of his 
 classmates about one-third were destined for the Christian 
 ministry, and it was not extraordinary that Shields, with his 
 pious zeal and profound religious nature, should have begun 
 to consider its claim upon him. As early as December, 
 1844. he became a regular attendant at the exercises of 
 trial preaching in the seminary. The faculty of Princeton 
 
xxxiv Charles Woodruff Shields. 
 
 College was composed of men who were not only great, 
 to mention only Henry, founder of the Smithsonian Insti- 
 tute, and James Waddell Alexander, almost the foremost 
 Presbyterian divine of his day, but they were one and all, 
 lay or clerical, men of devout minds. Their influence on 
 young Shields had been, as we have noted, very profound, 
 and but a short distance away in the seminary of the Pres- 
 byterian Church were men, Alexanders and Hodges, spir- 
 itually akin to the college professors and equally fascinating 
 by their intellectual attainments. Shields expressed in his 
 letters many doubts as to his spiritual strength, earnestly 
 entreating his mother to pray that he might have more holy 
 thoughts, more heavenward aspirations. He had many 
 fits of despondency, and wrote often of disappointments, 
 of temptations, of his unfitness and unworthiness for the 
 high and sacred calling of the ministry. At last, however, 
 his decision was taken and announced. One seems to read 
 between the lines that Dr. McLean influenced him in this, 
 unconsciously to the student ; be that as it may, the earlier 
 boyish judgment of the doctor's scholarship was entirely 
 revised, and, though the appearance and manner of the 
 saintly man seemed unfortunate to the youth, he spoke in the 
 highest terms of his professor's learning in a tone utterly 
 different from the first; and this at the time when his judg- 
 ment was ripe and he was in the midst of choosing his pro- 
 fession for life. His parents were content that their boy 
 should be a clergyman, but they were firm that it must be in 
 the church of his birth, a Presbyterian minister; and that he 
 should pursue his theological studies at home. Although 
 there is evidence that Mr. Shields already considered taking 
 orders in the Protestant Episcopal Church, as some of his 
 closest associates at Princeton actually did, yet on that point 
 he did not make a firm stand, so earnest were the represen- 
 tations of his mother; but his arguments for remaining in 
 Princeton during his theological training were so eloquent 
 and convincing that in that respect his parents yielded. 
 
A Biographical Sketch. xxxv 
 
 VII. 
 
 It was at the end of his senior year that a new college 
 calendar, substantially the one still in use, was adopted and 
 inaugurated. Accordingly, the holiday, after the momen- 
 tous decision was taken, scarcely afforded more than a 
 breathing space, and it was with some sense of exhaustion 
 that the laborious student entered on what proved to be the 
 most important phase of his education. His routine work 
 proved in itself a very serious task, and for a time he was 
 much depressed over his inability to take it with the cheerful 
 heart which alone goes " all the way " in a responsible and 
 solemn profession; in fact, his health was actually jeopard- 
 ized and he was compelled to seek recreation and recuper- 
 ation in a visit to his parents of some length, before the 
 close of the first year. He returned, however, at the open- 
 ing of the second year in vigorous health, with his mind clear, 
 his faculties alert, and all doubts dispelled. Thereafter 
 there was no interruption in a long course of congenial 
 study ; he pursued with ardor, not alone the regular course 
 of study, but the avocation of philosophical research which 
 was destined to become a life work. 
 
 Of the distinguished men who taught him he formed the 
 highest opinion ; as was indeed inevitable for one endowed 
 as he was with a friendly and appreciative mind. Dr. Alex- 
 ander's simple talks, he wrote, talks in which he utters great 
 truths with such familiarity and plainness, or Dr. Hodge 
 in one of his convincing doctrinal discourses ; there is no such 
 thing as resisting either. Dr. Alexander is plain, simple and 
 precise, having just the qualities and manner necessary to 
 give lucid, common sense views on vexed metaphysical 
 points, and detect the folly of fine-spun theories. Dr. Hodge 
 is logical and comprehensive, just what he ought to be in his 
 branch, to give rigid and correct interpretations of Scripture. 
 Professor Addison (Alexander) I would not attempt to de- 
 scribe; he completely stupefies me every time I hear his talk. 
 
xxxvi Charles Woodruff Shields. 
 
 such a stream of words, and so much meaning. He is my 
 model of a Christian scholar. 
 
 Upon one of the manuscripts of the young theologian is 
 this remark by the Old Doctor (Alexander) as he was rev- 
 erendly called : Mr. Shields has a very pleasing, plaintive 
 manner of speaking. In these days when energy and force 
 seem to be so much courted, it is very pleasing to meet with 
 that more winning and soothing style. 
 
 In the case of Dr. Shields it is true that the child is the 
 father of the man. He had not fairly entered college before 
 he began to ponder the Wie, Wo, und Wann ? of the German 
 poet. But for him the oracle was not entirely dumb ; though 
 he heard only in part and in whispers, yet he seemed to catch 
 words and thoughts, alike of weight and import. These 
 he carefully noted and pondered ; almost from day to day, 
 certainly from month to month. By the time he was in the 
 Seminary and had secured his full measure of health and 
 vigor, the desire for system took possession of his very 
 soul. Fortunately, the instinct and love for history were 
 well developed in him; the air of the universities was then 
 heavy with what the jargon of the hour styled German 
 "neologism," supposed to be lethal to all Christian faith; 
 and for many weak heads the draught was too strong, so 
 strong that rationalistic intoxication was a common phenom- 
 enon. But Shields, with a little knot of friends, had cool 
 heads and an abundance of hard common sense. They 
 thoroughly knew much of what men had already thought, 
 and of how they had behaved in consequence. They deter- 
 mined to know more, and to give all the pressing problems 
 a thorough investigation in the light of human experience. 
 The group consisted of W. A. Lord, W. A. Dod, A. N. 
 Littlejohn, J. C. Welling, and C. W. Shields ; they were all 
 notable men, nearly every one became distinguished in after 
 life. Three of these choice spirits the present writer has 
 been privileged to know; their learning and refinement were 
 so noteworthy that they would have been marked men in any 
 land and in any circle. 
 
A Biographical Sketch. xxxvii 
 
 In connection with these men, therefore, Shields began a 
 thorough and exhaustive examination of the philosophies 
 both of the past and of their own day. The philosophic 
 synthesis of systems which he had formed early in his intel- 
 lectual life appears to have served him well as a point of de- 
 parture even in his more exhaustive studies. But he pre- 
 served from first to last an open mind ; the debates of the little 
 club were continuous during the seminary course, each con- 
 tributed his share, and the conclusions of each were either 
 consciously or unconsciously modified by the results of the 
 general discussion. Two profound convictions remained in 
 Shields's mind: the unity and continuity of human thought, 
 the unity and continuity of the divine purpose as exhibited 
 in the historic church. These matters he fully explained to 
 his mother, and between the lines of his letters she seemed 
 to read his leaning toward the Episcopal Church. At all 
 events she considered the probability so great as to be, from 
 her point of view, an imminent danger, and with all her 
 weapons, ecclesiastical and personal, she combated the idea 
 in her letters. She was so far successful that her son pro- 
 posed to spend a year in Germany before entering on the 
 work of the ministry. This course was equally distasteful 
 to his good mother, who seems, from one rather doubtful 
 reference, to have dedicated her son to mission work in the 
 West. In a letter from one of his friends mention is likewise 
 made of another missionary scheme; namely, work in the 
 foreign field. This probably has no further significance 
 than that the conscientious young minister had casually, at 
 least, considered every possibility in the dedication of his 
 life. 
 
 The result of all these deliberations was the conviction 
 that he was still too young to enter on the work of the Pres- 
 byterian ministry, and that he could spend another year at 
 Princeton with excellent results, both in ripening his mind 
 and in strengthening the foundations of his scholarship. In 
 this decision he had determined the course of his life. No 
 longer attached to the membership of a class or even of a 
 
xxxviii Charles Woodruff Shields. 
 
 group, his mind had free course for independent develop- 
 ment, and his habits of omnivorous reading were confirmed, 
 were settled into their groove without the support of com- 
 radeship. His own feeling throughout later life was that 
 the quiet, detached, reposeful, intellectual life of this year 
 had been fertile almost beyond that of any other. Before it 
 was over he had found his line ; and from it he never devi- 
 ated to the very end. Determined on the practice of his 
 profession, at least for a time, many of the sermons he pre- 
 pared were of a marked philosophical cast. 
 
 During the holiday after leaving Princeton, which he 
 spent at New Albany, he made the acquaintance of Miss 
 Charlotte Elizabeth Bain, of Galway, New York. Later, 
 when he went to spend some time with an aunt in the city of 
 New York, while preaching in various pulpits, the acquaint- 
 ance was continued and ripened into love. On November 
 22nd, 1848, they were married in Stamford, Connecticut, 
 by the Reverend John McElroy. The happy life together 
 began in Brooklyn, where, with his wife and her sister, he 
 established himself during the time of his probation, as a 
 supply in various pulpits. 
 
 He was an accomplished preacher from the first. Licensed 
 as a candidate on February 2nd, 1847, he chose as his text: 
 " And Enoch walked with God and was not, for God took 
 him." One of his hearers wrote: "The introduction was 
 most beautiful, and the whole sermon was one of exceeding 
 excellence, chaining the attention of the audience through- 
 out." The first pulpit which he supplied was in Philadel- 
 phia. The proof of his great power as a preacher came in 
 the form of three calls, almost simultaneously, in 1849. 
 One was from Salem, Massachusetts ; one from Hempstead, 
 Long Island, and the third was from the Pearl Street Church 
 of New York. He was in much doubt as to which of the 
 three he should accept. After mature deliberation, in which 
 the question of his wife's health had to be carefully con- 
 sidered, he finally decided for Hempstead. Referring jocu- 
 larly to his decision, he had decided, he said, on the old 
 
A Biographical Sketch. xxxix 
 
 negro's advice : " Go where there is the most devil and the 
 least pay." 
 
 He was ordained in November and entered at once on 
 his work at a salary of five hundred dollars a year. His 
 task had been made clear in advance. Writing on the sub- 
 ject, he said: " They wish a minister who will give himself 
 up to a great deal of social visiting. The country portion of 
 the congregation, which forms the greater part, are espe- 
 cially solicitous on this point. They seem to feel that they 
 have hitherto been much neglected, and have signified their 
 desire to the session that it should be stipulated with their 
 new pastor that he should bestow more attention upon them 
 — should go out occasionally and spend the day, etc., etc. 
 They are not a reading people," he wrote in another letter; 
 "there are three men here who own fortunes who can scarcely 
 write their names, and there is not one family or person in 
 the village (as far as I have become acquainted) who is of 
 a congenial taste. I feel this deficiency very much, as I am 
 afraid if I remain here long I shall lapse into neglectful 
 habits of study, preaching, and so forth." It was apparently 
 as a matter of secular education for his people that early in 
 1850 he delivered a course of public lectures on architecture, 
 modelled on those of Professor Dod, which he had so greatly 
 admired. There is in one of his letters of the time an inter- 
 esting reminiscence of older customs. The clergymen in 
 attendance at a funeral were provided with certain mourning 
 insignia, among them an ample scarf of linen to be worn 
 over the shoulder. Of these Mr. Shields had so many that 
 they served as a sufficient provision for all the shirts he could 
 wear. 
 
 During the summer of 1850 there came a call from the 
 Second Presbyterian Church of Philadelphia. This he 
 naturally accepted, and in November he was installed, the 
 charge being delivered by Dr. John McDowell, and the ser- 
 mon being preached by Dr. H. A. Boardman. This was a 
 very important church, and the young pastor took hold with 
 a will. During the year ending October 1st, 1851, there were 
 
xl Charles Woodruff Shields. 
 
 held ninety-four public services, at seventy-three of which 
 the pastor preached. He likewise delivered thirty-six lec- 
 tures, and during the year twenty pews were rented. To 
 the end of his pastorate his zeal never abated, and he left 
 the active work of preacher and pastor in the full tide of 
 success. Among his leading men were such influential citi- 
 zens as Charles McAllister, Charles E. Morgan, Judge Joel 
 Jones, and Judge John K. Kane. His friends were men of 
 mark in the community, such clergymen as George and 
 Walter Stewart, Richardson, Brown, Van Rensselaer, Ches- 
 ter, Mann, Cuyler, and Engles, editor of the " Presbyterian." 
 Two of his intimate personal friends were the Hon. Furman 
 Sheppard, and Elisha Kent Kane, then in the height of his 
 renown as an Arctic explorer. Over the remains of the 
 latter, five years later, he preached a funeral sermon of 
 such power as to attract attention from the entire com- 
 munity. 
 
 In short, Mr. Shields took his place at once as a great force 
 in the city. This was the more remarkable in view of the 
 conditions then prevailing. As Bishop Henry C. Potter said 
 in his memorial address, delivered after the death of his 
 friend : " I was a boy in Philadelphia at that time, and I 
 can remember how swift we of different communions were 
 to fasten upon one another's failings, and how little love was 
 lost — or found — between us! What was most prized then 
 was a master of polemics — there is little doubt that the 
 orthodox believer, when he looked at his heterodox neigh- 
 bor, complacently thanked God that he was not as other men 
 were ! Does anybody wonder that the sensitive and devout 
 scholar turned from the ministry, in which it was often de- 
 manded that the preacher should meet such expectations or 
 be lectured by his deacons — turned, I say, from such a con- 
 ception of the office of the pulpit to the professor's chair? " 
 For fifteen years the- -pastor of the Second Presbyterian 
 Church was a faithful servant of his people and of his com- 
 munity, warning, admonishing, edifying, and cheering all 
 who sought his kindly offices. 
 
A Biographical Sketch. xli 
 
 The life of these years was stimulating in all directions. 
 He found time to indulge himself in extensive reading, and 
 occasionally to write verses of a fugitive sort, which relieved 
 his own emotional nature and gave great pleasure to many 
 discriminating readers. But the serious side of his private 
 study was dedicated throughout the entire period to a 
 continued and careful consideration of the great problems 
 which had absorbed him in earlier years. As early as 1855 
 he published a thoughtful article on " Presbyterian Polity," 
 and a volume entitled " A Book of Remembrance." The 
 latter is a beautiful allegory of the inner life; it had a wide 
 circulation through the Presbyterian publication board, and 
 ran through several editions. So important were his con- 
 tributions to philosophy and theology that in i860 he de- 
 livered the annual address at the Princeton Commencement 
 and received the degree of Doctor of Divinity. In an ad- 
 dress delivered long afterward, at the centennial celebration 
 of the American Philosophical Society, he said that he re- 
 membered Philadelphia as a city in which his early labors 
 found generous appreciation, to which he became attached 
 by the strongest ties of his life, and which he had ever re- 
 membered, as the exiled Greek remembered his ditlcis Argos, 
 the sweet home of art and letters and refinement. 
 
 This sentiment was doubtless awakened as much by recol- 
 lections of his private as of his public life in that city. 
 During the early years he had lived through the heats of 
 summer in the suburb of Torresdale. There, on August 
 9th, 1853, his wife died, leaving him a widower with three 
 children still in infancy. For eight years he devoted himself 
 to nourishing and cherishing them with double affection and 
 devotion. During the summer of 1856 he was in Newport, 
 Rhode Island, filling the pulpit of the Congregational church, 
 of which the well-known Dr. Thayer was pastor. He re- 
 membered all the simplicity of Newport living as he then 
 saw it ; no cottage life, no Ocean Drive, no Bellevue Avenue ; 
 just the old town, three large hotels, and many boarding 
 houses. The morning hours were spent in the quiet of the 
 
xlii Charles Woodruff Shields. 
 
 modest residence, dinner was at three, and the gayety was 
 a drive after that to Fort Adams, or to the " Beaches," and 
 then to the " Glen " for tea. There he first met Miss Eliz- 
 abeth Kane, of Philadelphia, who was visiting her cousin, 
 General John van Rensselaer. Their acquaintance was des- 
 tined in time to become a romance, and it was to this meet- 
 ing that he always attributed his enduring affection for 
 Newport. He did not return until 1877, but the place had 
 still, even heightened charms for him ; and it was in the study 
 of a house he built for himself, on a site overlooking Ochre 
 Point, that he wrote many chapters of his Philosophia 
 Ultima. 
 
 This friendship led also to the forming of many inti- 
 macies in Philadelphia. These are worth enumerating 
 because they greatly influenced the later life of Dr. Shields, 
 affording him the pleasure and stimulus of social and intel- 
 lectual companionship, which everywhere made him one of 
 the initiated. Fernrock, the country seat of Judge Kane, 
 was the centre of a group, many members of which were 
 destined to eminence in later years. Among them were 
 Miss Lilly Macalister, who, as Mrs. Lawton, held a unique 
 position in Washington society from the days of Buchanan 
 to the second administration of Cleveland ; there were the 
 daughters of Fanny Kemble, Sarah and Fanny Butler, the 
 former married to the late Owen J. Wistar, and the latter to 
 the Hon. James Lee, now Dean of Hereford, England; 
 there was Miss Charlotte Wood, wife of the late Vicar of 
 Wakefield, the Reverend Edward Bell; there were also 
 Thomas Hicks, and three medical students, J. Da Costa, 
 S. Weir Mitchell, and John K. Kane, a son of the house; of 
 :ourse, too, there was Dr. Elisha Kent Kane, of the Navy, 
 who returned thither to recuperate from his voyages in the 
 Arctic. It is easy to understand the attractions of such con- 
 genial friends to a hard-working pastor, glad to seek relief 
 for a season from the cares of a large city church. 
 
A Biographical Sketch. xliii 
 
 vm. 
 
 In 1S61 Dr. Shields published a pamphlet entitled " Phi- 
 losophia Ultima." It contained a digest of his philosophical 
 studies up to that date. It was an essay, partly historical, 
 partly critical, claiming that eventually there would issue 
 from a complete system of knowledge, which reason and 
 revelation are combining to produce, a final philosophy; in 
 other words, that sooner or later there would be a conclusive 
 harmony of science and religion. This paper was almost a 
 defiance of the orthodox thought of America as it then was, 
 for it had no apologetic motive whatever, though it claimed 
 that the relation of apologetics to philosophy demanded the 
 most careful study from the philosophical point of view. In 
 the view of the Presbyterian Church it was erroneous to 
 make philosophy the arbiter between science and religion; 
 to emphasize the opposition of science and religion was un- 
 duly to enlarge the area of apologetics, to introduce an un- 
 philosophic element into philosophy, which at most is but the 
 handmaid of theology. The essence of Dr. Shields's posi- 
 tion was that between true religion and true science there 
 could be no conflict, but that between the " crude, unproved 
 hypotheses put forth in the name of science, and the human, 
 fallible dogmas claiming to express the Bible " there was 
 already joined a bitter conflict, and that it was a proper task 
 of philosophy to sit in judgment on the claims of both, but 
 to purge the evidence and establish the facts beneath the 
 claims. On the one hand, the importance and value of 
 certain so-called scientific hypotheses, on the other, the 
 importance and value of certain so-called religious dogmas ; 
 from a determination of these would finally issue a harmony 
 of secular and religious thought. Such was the revo- 
 lutionary position of the manifesto. Of set purpose the 
 proud title was a challenge. 
 
xliv Charles Woodruff Shields. 
 
 IX. 
 
 In order to gain a hearing the challenger must enter the 
 lists ; these were already marked and enclosed for the appel- 
 lant, partly in the existing conditions of thought, partly in 
 the position which Dr. Shields had established in the Phila- 
 delphia community, and especially in the esteem which he 
 enjoyed at Princeton. His claim to a professor's chair was 
 manifest. Accordingly the idea engaged the attention of 
 many influential people, and the agitation took form almost 
 immediately. In due time it became evident that his chair 
 must be in philosophy, as far removed from the field of 
 Christian apologetics as was necessary to secure and keep a 
 clear perspective. The ideal situation was manifestly in 
 Princeton College, as his alma mater was then popularly 
 styled. When the Presbyterian Church located its chief and 
 oldest seminary at the doors of Princeton College, it did so 
 with the clear intention that the interaction between the two 
 institutions should redound to the advantage of both. Their 
 relations have ever been close and harmonious; yet their 
 chairs have been held by men of the most divergent views, 
 and their policies are for the most part avowedly distinct. 
 It would be no breach in custom for a graduate of both to 
 maintain in the undenominational college what the Calvin- 
 istic theology of the seminary might not admit, the more so 
 as Dr. Shields was a convinced and consistent Calvinist him- 
 self. By 1865 the matter was arranged, and in that year 
 he was made professor of the harmony of science and 
 revealed religion. This was the first chair of the kind to be 
 established in any American college. Princeton contributed 
 from its meagre funds six hundred dollars, the rest of the 
 salary was provided by subscriptions of friends to the project 
 most of whom were in Philadelphia: later, when the pro- 
 fessor inherited a modest fortune, these sums were all scru- 
 pulously repaid. 
 
 On August 25th, 1861, Dr. Shields had taken to wife his 
 dear friend Miss Elizabeth Kane, whom he had so long ad- 
 
A Biographical Sketch. xlv 
 
 mired and who had been the inspiration for much of his best 
 work. They lived on Rittenhouse Square, and what with the 
 duties of a growing family, increased by social activities 
 incident to a new sphere, life was so full and exacting as to 
 make very difficult, if not impossible, the pursuit of philo- 
 sophical studies. The endless cares of the pastor weighed 
 heavily upon him, feeling as he did that his period of min- 
 isterial work had been faithfully absolved. It was with 
 delight that he hailed his Princeton call, and the vista which 
 it opened of congenial work and study. The last years of 
 his Philadelphia pastorate were, however, not so far absorbed 
 by public duties but that he found time to publish a Presby- 
 terian prayer-book, thus inaugurating in the church of his 
 birth the liturgical movement which has reached the stage 
 set forth by the action of the General Assembly in 1904, 
 approving the report of their committee on the order of com- 
 mon worship. Dr. Shields's book contains a historical state- 
 ment of the work of the Savoy Conference, in which the 
 language of the English prayer-book was modified to satisfy 
 the scruples of Presbyterians with a view to the unity of an 
 Anglican Catholic church. The body of the book contains 
 all existing historical material for such a manual. While 
 the volume has never attracted general attention, yet sev- 
 eral editions have been sold, and it has been a constant re- 
 minder of the possibility in the contemporary age of what 
 was contemplated at the outset of modern history. Further, 
 the introduction gave evidence of thoroughness in historical 
 research, and displays a mastery of material in style and 
 form which did not pass unnoticed by historians. He was 
 later to be honored with the burden of historical teaching; 
 which he did not seek and which was far from being con- 
 genial to his tastes. 
 
 Dr. Shields established himself with his family in a com- 
 fortable and conveniently situated cottage, where he dis- 
 pensed a generous hospitality, spiritual, intellectual, and 
 material, for many years. For some time his income was 
 small ; but, such as it was, the gracious presence of his wife 
 
xlvi Charles Woodruff Shields. 
 
 and his own genial personality made his hearthstone a centre 
 of influence from the beginning. There radiated from it a 
 spirit of refinement and culture which made it a power 
 among his colleagues and his students. The first period of 
 his Princeton life was one, however, of some disappointment 
 and much sorrow. As his family grew in numbers and in 
 age, the demands upon his slender resources increased 
 steadily. Much of his work was that for which he was pre- 
 pared: the writing and delivery of lectures, the chapel 
 preaching, and the general routine of the professor's life, 
 but there was alarming and fatal sickness in his family, and 
 increased expense had to be met by exertions which though 
 remunerative did not advance the cause to which he had 
 devoted himself. As the crown of sorrow, Mrs. Shields 
 died in 1869. Again he found himself in widowed solitude, 
 charged with all the care which little children demand from 
 both their parents. 
 
 Always sensitive and retiring, it now seemed as if he 
 must remain a sad and discouraged recluse. For a little 
 time it was such a life that he led. But the well-spring of 
 a higher life was copious and strong within him ; as in many 
 similar instances his mind and his books provided balm for 
 his wounded spirit and in renewed study he found a measure 
 of consolation. At last he felt the impulse to original com- 
 position, and in the summer of 1870, working day after day, 
 far into the night, he began to set down the ideas he hoped 
 to embody in his first book. Among the younger men who 
 had enjoyed the privilege of some intimacy with Dr. Shields 
 was one who was destined to reach great distinction as a 
 biblical scholar and who is now (1905) a professor in the 
 University of Leipsic, Caspar Rene Gregory. After months 
 of solitary labor, his older friend called the young scholar 
 to his service ; their intimacy grew apace and after the- 
 autumn of the year they were much together in the evenings, 
 frequently, too, in the afternoons ; and sometimes in the 
 mornings as well. At last Dr. Gregory came to pass long 
 periods of time, weeks together, under his friend's roof. 
 
A Biographical Sketch. jdvii 
 
 I lis account of the author's labors and methods gives a clear 
 insight into the genesis of the volumes, as they grew on 
 Dr. Shields's hands. 
 
 With reference to his sources, says Dr. Gregory, I was for 
 some time librarian of the Seminary Library, and 1 used 
 to search out all kinds of things at first hand for him. An 
 old copy of Petrus Lombardus, the Master of Sentences, 
 sticks in my memory ; and philosophers of all kinds, and 
 scientific men in general. So far as I can remember, the 
 longest hunt I had, referred to Galileo ; and I scarcely ven- 
 ture now to say what the last point was, save that the aim 
 was to get authentic testimony about his trial ; testimony 
 that was not in books. It is quite possible that some note 
 of mine about it is still among Dr. Shields's papers. I went 
 to a then very old and very world-forsaken, I think French, 
 monastery in Baltimore; it seems to me that the priest or 
 the monk whom I there saw was very suspicious, and that I 
 got nothing out of him. I was more successful at Phila- 
 delphia, at the Bishop's house near the Cathedral. There I 
 met a priest who, I think, had been the Secretary of the 
 Bishop at the Vatican Council ; his name escapes me at this 
 moment; I think of Hauptmann, Hausmann, or Hoffman, 
 but the chances are that it was something very different; he 
 is probably, if still living, a dignitary of the Church, for he 
 was learned, facile, and in favor. He at once entered into 
 the spirit of the thing and, after we had rummaged around 
 for a while, he said that he thought he had seen an account 
 of the trial or some quotations from proceedings at the trial 
 in, I think, an Italian Review. This he found, and a foot- 
 note gave just what we were looking for. Dr. Shields was 
 greatly pleased when I got back to Princeton with the notes. 
 That is enough about the sources. Dr. Shields, I always 
 found willing and desirous to get back to and down to the 
 original sources. 
 
 Taking then the accessible sources, often, of course, a 
 volume or two of the given author, Dr. Shields wrote with 
 the greatest care an abstract of the opinions of the author, 
 
xlviii Charles Woodruff Shields. 
 
 often several pages long. Such longer summaries he then 
 again reduced to shorter ones, tearing the old ones up. 
 Finally, I objected to his destruction of the preliminary work 
 and he laid these papers away; whether they still exist or 
 not I do not know. From these abstracts he proceeded to 
 the writing of the given chapter in his book. How long he 
 wrote and rewrote and tore up I cannot tell. I kept remon- 
 strating with him and insisting upon it that he must begin 
 to settle the manuscript for the press. I should say that I 
 read everything as he wrote it, or he read it to me. I 
 worked at my own work, then largely philosophy and his- 
 tory, at the window side of his table, a large table, doubt- 
 less still at Morven or Newport, while he worked at the 
 room-side of the table, so that we were hours together there. 
 And then we would go to chairs at each side of the little 
 wood fire, where he would read Tennyson or Matthew 
 Arnold, or something else nice, to me, or we discussed 
 heaven and earth, and the rest of creation or non-creation. 
 To go on : at last I said, " This must stop. You must 
 give me the beginning of Volume I, and I shall copy it off 
 and lay it away, and that will be as if it were printed, and 
 you must let it alone and go on with the rest. And so for II, 
 and III." And we did that. How far the process actually 
 went on before I left for Leipsic, on May 9 (sailing May 
 10), 1873, I cannot now remember. I take it for granted 
 that the most of I, much of II, and a little of III (do not ask 
 me how far I, II, III reach) was done, and of course he was 
 working away on the piles of abstracts for the rest of it. I 
 put the copied-off, quasi-printed, parts into one of the 
 drawers on my side of the table. 
 
 As to persons, it should be mentioned that Dr. Welling, 
 when he first came to Princeton, lived at Dr. Shields's and 
 was thus for some time closely with him, talking over and, 
 I think, hearing everything, although I cannot now say just 
 how much he read or heard of the book. Dr. Shields did 
 not have much to do with people in general, although he was, 
 of course, ever friendly to all. Once or twice we called on 
 
A Biographical Sketch. xlix 
 
 John Miller, after he came back to Princeton, for he amused 
 and interested us. He was full of thought, and totally reck- 
 less in what he said. Once he appalled us by saying, I think 
 in the presence of his lovely wife, in the midst of a theolog- 
 ical argument: "Now, if I should murder my wife " 
 
 We knew there was no danger of it, but it was an uncanny 
 way of pointing a position. 
 
 These pleasant memories of Professor Gregory suggest 
 the character of his friend, as it was then formed and as 
 it remained substantially to the last. His scholarship was 
 marked by three qualities; it was based on the rock of 
 original research, it was special within limits carefully re- 
 lated to the whole field, it had the clearness which Descartes 
 says is the test of truth. In his friendships he was careful 
 to select those of the strongest individuality, so that the 
 interchange of relations might increase the vital forces of 
 all concerned. Then, as now, Princeton abounded in men 
 of strong purpose and of fearless personality, utterly indif- 
 ferent to the levelling forces so active in the outer world. 
 The intercourse of such persons with each other results in 
 the sharpening of minds and wits, in the challenge and re- 
 tort, the feint and guard, which are conducive to chivalric 
 liberty, reciprocity of sympathy, and vigorous execution of 
 tasks. Busy scholars guard their privacy as a sacred thing, 
 and carefully maintain the conventions of life; the hours of 
 leisure are correspondingly free and joyous. The atmos- 
 phere thus created was a congenial one for the training of 
 Dr. Shields's natural powers, and he throve in it despite his 
 sorrows and his cares. 
 
 Moreover, he was in hearty sympathy with the policy of 
 the university to which he belonged, a policy based on tra- 
 dition and on the conditions of its means and geographical 
 site. Established in protest against ultra conservatism, it 
 was committed to hearing the other side on all disputed 
 questions ; its constitution was founded in the liberal arts and 
 sciences, and to the cultivation of these it was irrevocably 
 committed. Whatever the future had in store, the present 
 
1 Charles Woodruff Shields. 
 
 path was clearly defined ; in the words of a famous son of 
 Princeton, her scholars were not to be citizens of some petty 
 principality, but freemen in the commonwealth of knowl- 
 edge. The place itself has been, from the first, a haunt for 
 men of all sections in our federal union ; it bred the rebels 
 of 1776 under Witherspoon, it saw Washington's greatest 
 strategic achievement, it saw the recognition of American 
 independence, its vane pointed first South and then North in 
 the Civil War, it had first introduced science into the cur- 
 riculum of American colleges, in short, both theoretically and 
 historically it stood for liberty without license. 
 
 With such aspirations and such a past, the task of develop- 
 ment along its chosen course would have been easy for the 
 college, had its resources been adequate to its aspirations ; but 
 unfortunately such was not the case, and no member of her 
 faculty could escape the performance of work for which he 
 was known to be capable. The most conspicuous gap in her 
 course of study was the absence of all instruction in secular 
 history, except as it was given incidentally to the instruction 
 in other departments. Dr. McCosh succeeded to the Pres- 
 ident's chair at the opening of the college year in 1868. He 
 at once inspired all the friends of the university with confi- 
 dence in his guidance, and delighted them with his shrewd 
 insight into the character of his task. Enthusiasm increased 
 as his projects were realized one after another, and his col- 
 leagues were ready for almost any sacrifice. In 1870, there- 
 fore, Dr. Shields assumed the work of teaching modern 
 history, the college assuming the whole of his salary. For 
 thirteen years he lectured on European and American civili- 
 zation, on English constitutional law, on philosophical his- 
 tory, and on social science. So brilliant and thorough was 
 his work, in spite of the energy which it took from his 
 chosen field of labor, that the compulsion to continue for so 
 long was really of his own making. He obtained relief at 
 the last only by sheer will-power, in the determination to 
 sacrifice a portion of his salary that he might devote himself 
 solely to his specialty. For no part of his activities is he 
 
A Biographical Sketch. li 
 
 held in more grateful remembrance by his pupils than for 
 the inspiration they received from his large and forcible 
 views of history, and for the enduring impulse he gave to the 
 development of historical studies in Princeton University. 
 
 His intellectual discouragements, therefore, were in the 
 main due to his own qualities and abilities. He neverthe- 
 less felt them keenly, and was often impatient as time flew by 
 and the field he had surveyed remained untilled. A born 
 and tearless pioneer, it seemed hard that he should not enter 
 on the task of occupying and improving his preemptions. 
 What was more, he was for long an academic preacher, 
 second to none in eloquence and edification. He held his 
 student audiences spellbound in the college chapel, and visit- 
 ing strangers thronged to hear him. A number of his most 
 famous and best remembered sermons were printed by re- 
 quest. They remind one of the " Old Doctor's " criticism, 
 when the professor was yet a student. Their tone is dis- 
 tinctively that of the plaintive scholar, who has noted the 
 conditions into which he was born, and holds himself respon- 
 sible for those in which he lives. They abound in felicitous 
 phrase, in happy illustrations, and in philosophic insight. 
 They console while they instruct, they encourage while they 
 warn, they combine the fire of conviction with the charm of 
 melancholy. To the preparations of these sermons their 
 author gave lavishly of his time and his force, so much, in- 
 deed, that in them he cultivated his literary gifts to a higher 
 perfection than in either his lectures or his books. It was his 
 sufficient reward that his hearers were appreciative and 
 grateful. When, after many years of such service, he felt 
 compelled to devote his life to what he regarded as higher 
 duty, it was not without regret that he relinquished the 
 stimulating pleasure of regular ministerial service. 
 
 Considering the natural sensitiveness of Dr. Shields, and 
 the circumstances under which he had entered upon his duties 
 in Princeton, it was not strange that he desired to know hi >w 
 he stood in the opinion of his public. On this point he con- 
 sulted one of his intimate friends, William Baker, the well- 
 
lii Charles Woodruff Shields. 
 
 known author of several striking books, among them the 
 novel which not long since absorbed a host of critical readers, 
 " His Majesty Myself." In a letter dated November nth, 
 1866, Mr. Baker wrote: " I have only two small statements 
 to make. Whether or not you will think them worth the 
 paper and the time spent in reading this, you must decide. 
 Imprimis, Dr. Duffield accompanied me to this city. In an 
 incidental way he told me that you gave the utmost satis- 
 faction in your chair to all. He was even enthusiastic about 
 your present and future in Princeton. Since coming here I 
 have heard that Dr. Hodge, of Princeton, has been speaking 
 of your course in a manner most nattering to yourself. This 
 I have direct. Moral : Do not be so sensitive. You are too 
 self-conscious, too introspective. Forget your own existence. 
 Be so absorbed in, say, the culture of — even turnips, if noth- 
 ing else — the youth about you, as to have only a traditional 
 memory of yourself. I believe if one could know and care as 
 little for one's self as a tulip does, or a nightingale, one would 
 be that much the more fragrant and melodious for it. What 
 a sage I am, am I not? " The recipient of this letter profited 
 much from it ; for it looks at present as if he might have 
 kept it by him for a time. At all events, he eventually 
 acquired, as was just, the well earned self-confidence without 
 which men are after all broken reeds. 
 
 The high esteem and affection which was expressed to Mr. 
 Baker by Dr. Duffield, of the college, and Dr. Hodge, of 
 the seminary, in their utterances of consideration for Dr. 
 Shields were universal with all his colleagues in both insti- 
 tutions. He easily attained to respect and popularity, and 
 his eminence was never disputed. Possibly the degree of 
 confidence which his associates placed in him was most 
 clearly expressed in the fact that throughout his long connec- 
 tion with Princeton, they regarded him as the one man best 
 fitted for the most difficult of tasks, the preparation of the 
 record to be spread on their minutes concerning the char- 
 acter and services of those who by death or resignation were 
 taken from the service of the college. In him they recog- 
 
A Biographical Sketch. liii 
 
 nized the typical Princetonian, steeped in the college history 
 and feeling, endowed with a splendid gift of expression and 
 able to gauge the proportionate value of services rendered, 
 as no other could. Besides, his human sympathy, tempered 
 by disciplined emotions, would, as it did, surely result in a 
 fine literary cast to such a record. The many such estimates 
 from his pen are alike adequate and beautiful. Were the 
 old fashion of elaborate epitaphs still in vogue, these polished 
 and terse characterizations would well commemorate virtue 
 and gladden the hearts of posterity. It is a misfortune that 
 they must ever remain inaccessible to all but the antiquary. 
 
 With the revolving years the home of Dr. Shields became 
 a centre of social importance, which afforded the highest and 
 purest pleasure to his neighbors and to strangers alike. In 
 his oldest daughter, as she grew to woman's estate, he had a 
 helper and companion abundantly fit to preside at his hos- 
 pitable table and welcome his guests to a well-ordered house. 
 The students and other young visitors made life cheerful and 
 gay. Into their amusements the head of the family threw 
 himself with zest ; for one of their most important enterprises 
 he made a dramatic version of Tennyson's " Princess," care- 
 fully studied with reference to the exigencies of the ama- 
 teur stage. It was duly acted by his children and their 
 friends under his careful management, and with such suc- 
 cess that he was persuaded to publish it in a little volume 
 which has been of use to many similar companies of young 
 folk. These, and like recreations of an elevating character, 
 gave a distinguished quality to the household. Miss Shields 
 deserves more than a passing mention. She was her father's 
 support, and a mother to his children ; a woman of most un- 
 common parts, of brilliant attainments and trenchant wit ; 
 her company was eagerly sought by her equals in age and by 
 her elders; children were her adoring friends. After her 
 marriage she presided over her husband's home as she had 
 
liv Charles Woodruff Shields. 
 
 over that of her father, and " Springdale " was a centre of 
 influence quite as important as her father's house; after her 
 grandfather's death, Dr. Shields came into his comfortable 
 inheritance, and made his home with her until her untimely 
 death. Her memory is still green with those who were 
 young in Princeton during her mature life; and men now 
 verging over the term of middle life pay hearty tribute to 
 the power for good which she exercised over those who were 
 favored with her friendship. 
 
 When her younger sister became Mrs. Stockton, it was 
 possible for Dr. Shields to purchase " Morven," the ancient 
 seat of her husband's family, and there in the companionship 
 of his children and grandchildren, he spent the remaining 
 years of his life. In this acquisition Dr. Shields took the 
 most intense delight. He wrote of it that it had been the 
 joy of Richard Stockton, scholar and statesman, who had 
 been a student at Elizabeth, where he met Annis Boudinot, 
 daughter of Elias, president of the first congress. As Mrs. 
 Stockton she came to the ancestral home in Princeton, and 
 fixed upon it the poetic name of " Morven," taken from the 
 scene of Ossian's poems. As a manorial estate it originated 
 in a grant from William Penn to an earlier Richard Stock- 
 ton, in 1701, of a tract of five thousand five hundred acres, 
 embracing the present grounds of the university and the vil- 
 lage of Princeton. Nor was it a matter of little interest to 
 him and to many others, that by a coincidence, after a lapse 
 of a hundred and thirty years, branches of the Stockton and 
 Woodruff families, so closely associated in colonial times, 
 should so long after be connected by marriage, and come 
 into possession of the Morven mansion at a juncture when 
 otherwise that family seat would have passed out of a suc- 
 cession in which it had been maintained for two centuries. 
 Within its walls on the due month and day occurred a nota- 
 ble celebration of the two-hundredth anniversary of the grant. 
 There were gathered for the festival many descendants of 
 both stocks, and the present holders of lands whose title rests 
 in the grant. The ceremonial was that of the far-off olden 
 
A Biographical Sketch. lv 
 
 time, as were the costumes; the arrangements, carefully 
 studied by Dr. Shields in anticipation of the event, and with 
 reference to the background of his historic house, were ad- 
 mirably carried out in all particulars, and impressed those 
 present with the dignity of their heritage, and with its 
 accompanying responsibilities, exactly as he had desired. 
 The place is as famous by its later associations as by its 
 origin, and its owner looked upon its possession as a public 
 trust. To all visitors on the high festivals of town and 
 gown alike, its doors were open for inspection ; and very 
 often in lavish hospitality. 
 
 Reference has already been made to the tender associa- 
 tions which endeared Newport to Dr. Shields; among his 
 first cares after his succession to his inheritance was the pur- 
 chase of a field on the then sparsely settled Ochre Point. 
 There he built a' cottage after his own ideas, and he furnished 
 it in the exercise of his chastened and exquisite taste. From 
 1877 onward Newport was his summer home, except for a 
 single year, the holidays of which were spent in a European 
 tour, which gave him the greatest possible pleasure. His 
 visitors at Newport found him one of a select circle of 
 literary and other friends, no member of which was more 
 sought after than himself. In the companionship of emi- 
 nent men and women he found refreshment and strength ; as 
 has been said, in the quiet of his study on Ochre Point much 
 of his profoundest thinking and best writing was done. One 
 of his activities was his connection with the " Town and 
 Country Club " ; of it Mrs. Julia Ward Howe was the presi- 
 dent and he was the vice-president. Its membership is in all 
 respects remarkable, comprising the keen minds of many 
 sections of the country, and its proceedings afforded to Dr. 
 Shields a valuable stimulus ; the honor it paid him is sufficient 
 evidence of what he did for it. These and his Princeton 
 associations in winter were the sources from which he re- 
 newed his perennial youth. He was in the full enjoyment of 
 all the activities which rendered his life so rich and varied, 
 when death overtook him at Newport during his eightieth 
 
Ivi Charles Woodruff Shields. 
 
 year, on August 26th, 1904. He literally " fell on sleep " ; 
 in a moment, without pain or warning, he was unconscious, 
 and in that state he departed this life. 
 
 XI. 
 
 Dr. Shields died in the communion and orders of the 
 Episcopal Church. The circumstances under which he 
 changed his denominational connection were as characteris- 
 tic as any other events of his life. Not far from Morven 
 stands the Princeton Inn, a hostelry founded and managed 
 by graduates of the college in order that students and their 
 friends, graduates and their families, may enjoy the ameni- 
 ties of life in quiet comfort. This purpose appealed to the 
 master of Morven in every way, as elevating the social 
 life of the undergraduates, inviting the friends of both the 
 institutions to lengthened sojourn, and bringing strangers 
 to visit with leisure the historic sights of the town and sur- 
 rounding country. Devoted to the cause of true temperance, 
 he did not hesitate to sign the application for license required 
 of hotels by the law of the State, and followed the example 
 in so doing of other neighbors, men of the first position in the 
 country and the community. For some years this fact, as was 
 to be expected, attracted no attention whatever. But when 
 one of the surges of intemperate agitation against temper- 
 ance, in favor of total abstinence, which arise from time to 
 time, lifted its crest in all the Eastern college towns, it broke 
 also over Princeton. The crusaders attacked Dr. Shields as 
 a Presbyterian minister, and sought to accumulate capital at 
 his expense. Their influence reached far, and appeared in 
 the sessions of the Presbytery to which he belonged. It 
 finally became clear that a very delicate and embarrassing 
 issue was to be joined. His first and natural impulse was to 
 meet it without compromise and stand on the ground of 
 personal liberty, which has always been that of his church 
 and of his own. He was little disturbed by the abuse and 
 vilification of fanaticism, and was quite ready to try con- 
 
A Biographical Sketch. lvii 
 
 elusions with his opponents. In time, however, he had a 
 change of conviction. It appeared that the General As- 
 sembly of the Presbyterian Church had advised against the 
 endorsement of a license as a reprehensible complicity with 
 the liquor traffic; just as it had characterized card-playing, 
 theatre-going, and dancing as " unscriptural, immoral, and 
 improper " ; and while the modifying circumstances of the 
 Princeton Inn might well have given him a firm standing for 
 the defence of private judgment, yet it was possible that 
 a long and protracted struggle might ensue. From this he 
 shrank, partly because of sensitiveness, partly because he 
 did not wish to involve his friends in troublesome litigations 
 in the church courts, while above all he desired to avoid the 
 scandal of Christian brethren infringing the apostolic in- 
 junction against the judgment of another man's servant. 
 He determined, therefore, to withdraw from the ministry 
 of his ancestral church, and avoid the embarrassment it 
 might cause to its many members who did not see eye to eye 
 with him. 
 
 But whither should he go? He felt bound to examine 
 himself thoroughly, and weigh the claims of all the reformed 
 churches; this he did earnestly and deliberately. The de- 
 cision which he reached might have been foreseen ; as indeed 
 it was, by many of his intimate friends. Among the many 
 elements within the fold of the Presbyterian Church in 
 America there has always been one, which was essentially 
 Scotch in its attitude toward Presbyterian ordination, hold- 
 ing their own orders to be as apostolic as any others. They 
 have also stood firmly on the historic ground of reform as 
 opposed to protest and schism. These are they who, when 
 separated from the ministrations of their own church, natu 
 rally gravitate toward the one other communion of Protes- 
 tants which maintains a similar position. A divine-right 
 Presbyterian stands closer to the Episcopal Church than to 
 any other branch of the Teutonic church. These matters 
 were always, as we have seen, close to the heart of Dr. 
 Shields ; and further, his belief in liturgical worship had now 
 
lviii Charles Woodruff Shields. 
 
 brought him to the conviction that all eclecticism in that re- 
 gard was vain, that the reunion of Protestant Christendom 
 could better be accomplished on the basis of the Book of 
 Common Prayer than on any other. It was certain, there- 
 fore, that his decision would fall as it did. Moreover, among 
 the clergy of the Episcopal Church he had many, many per- 
 sonal friends, and there, as he felt, was held the orthodox 
 view of temperance ; the scriptural view, antagonistic to that 
 which criticised the conduct of the Son of Man and which 
 "was invading His church, and defacing His sacrament." On 
 December 14th, 1898, he received the first orders of the Epis- 
 copal Church from Bishop Scarborough, of New Jersey, in the 
 chapel of the Good Shepherd, in the city of New York. On 
 May 28th, 1899, he was further ordained to the full ministry 
 of that communion in Garden City Cathedral by Bishop 
 Littlejohn, of the Diocese of Long Island, his lifelong friend 
 and comrade. Not long afterward he was elected a trustee 
 of the General Theological Seminary in New York. Before 
 that institution he delivered the Bishop Paddock lectures 
 on the " Evidences of Christianity," which form a part of 
 the following volume. His services as a preacher were in 
 frequent requisition in the pulpit of Trinity Church, Prince- 
 ton, and elsewhere. From Trinity Church, in Princeton, 
 he was buried, and from its pulpit Bishop Potter, of New 
 York, preached an eloquent discourse in memory of one 
 whose highest ideals were unity of the faith and unity of the 
 church of God upon earth. 
 
 May we suppose, said the Bishop, that it cost Dr. 
 Shields no pang to sunder ties and end companionships 
 which, in their origin, reached back for generations, and 
 were as truly a part of his mental and emotional identity as 
 anything can be ? There were men whom he met every day, 
 who loved and honored him — as who that really knew him 
 could help doing? — and who had no smallest doubt as to the 
 honesty of his motives, or the integrity of his action, in any 
 step that separated him from his earlier associates ; but who 
 could never forget that a certain action had been determined 
 
A Biographical Sketch. lix 
 
 upon by him, and that a certain step had been taken. When 
 ; ese men met him, with whatever continuance of the old 
 warmth and cordiality, they knew and he knew, that there 
 was one group of subjects that were to be avoided, and one 
 realm of discussion even the outer portals of which were 
 never any more to be opened ! And yet, continued the 
 Bishop, with what gentle dignity and gracious self-re- 
 straint, through it all, he bore himself! Yes, and with what 
 true nobility of largeness and charity did this ancient Uni- 
 versity bear herself toward him! One can easily imagine, 
 on the part of associates and authorities from whom he 
 separated, something of resentment, because of action on Dr. 
 Shields's part, which some of them thought inconsistent, if 
 not positively disloyal. But if they ever thought so, they 
 never said so; or if they said so, they said it with such 
 cautious reserve that it never came to outside ears. And I 
 must confess, for myself, that there has always seemed some- 
 thing especially dear and beautiful in the fact that, with 
 Princeton, its social and its intellectual life ; and best of all, 
 with that great University in which so long he was a pro- 
 fessor — that with all these he remained identified to the last ! 
 Long may his memory survive here as that of a true scholar, 
 a pure and most lovable man, who brought to great oppor- 
 tunities great gifts, and who used them, with unwearied 
 fidelity, for God and man ! 
 
 These appreciative words are strictly and literally true. 
 The attitude of the university continued in the end what it 
 had been in the beginning, what it has ever been in like in- 
 stances, sympathetic to every man who sincerely seeks the 
 truth of faith and conduct in the light given to him. For 
 example. Dr. Patton, President during fourteen years of Dr. 
 Shields's professorship, was the most outspoken critic of his 
 colleague's work in philosophy, the fearless champion of 
 the orthodoxy as held in the Princeton Seminary. His was 
 the only criticism which ever moved Dr. Shields from the 
 even tenor of his studies, and induced him to defend his 
 positions. Yet in the minute which he prepared for the fac- 
 
lx Charles Woodruff Shields. 
 
 ulty on the resignation of Dr. Patton, he did not miss a 
 single one of the great milestones which had characterized 
 the passing administration; its growth in material and in- 
 tellectual equipment, the maturity which it had reached in 
 academic development, the new spirit of research, and the 
 educational method by which it had been marked. To his 
 rare logical skill, acumen, and familiarity with living issues, 
 there is also a sincere tribute. In turn Dr. Patton has put on 
 record the esteem in which he held Dr. Shields, and the 
 position he had taken. I have no reason to believe, he 
 said in the " Princeton Bulletin," that when he (Dr. 
 Shields) took orders in the Episcopal Church his views re- 
 specting the validity of his own Presbyterian ordination had 
 undergone a change; and I am confident that his Calvin- 
 istic theology underwent no revision, either before or after 
 he left the Presbyterian ministry. To those who knew the 
 circumstances it was not strange that Dr. Shields, so late 
 in life, entered the ministry of another church; and to those 
 of us who knew, and loved, and trusted him, his change 
 of denominational relations made no difference in our sense 
 of fellowship with him. He was to us the same genial, 
 gentle, lovable, refined, and scholarly Dr. Shields that he had 
 always been ; and we were only sorry that the roll of minis- 
 ters of the Protestant Episcopal Church had been enriched 
 through our loss of a name that had long adorned our own. 
 These words of one who is now the president of the Prince- 
 ton Theological Seminary, are a fitting pendant to those of 
 Bishop Potter. 
 
 John Calvin was indeed one of Dr. Shields's heroes. The 
 aspersions cast upon the great reformer, he regarded with 
 contempt and disgust; in 1893 he published a monograph, 
 recondite in its learning and fiercely polemic in its argument, 
 which spurns the accusation that Calvin burned Servetus. 
 No one has yet risen to refute it. So strongly had the theme 
 :aken hold of the writer's imagination that he saw the dra- 
 matic qualities of it in a clear light, and as an avocation he 
 composed a drama entitled, " The Reformer of Geneva," 
 
A Biographical Sketch, lxi 
 
 which was published and widely read. Charles Dudley 
 Warner, Laurence Hutton, Weir Mitchell, Henry M. Baird, 
 and other experts like them wrote of it in unstinted praise; 
 newspapers like the Philadelphia Press, the Christian 
 World, of London, and the New York Evening Post, 
 reviewed it sympathetically. Perhaps the highest tribute 
 came from Professor Dowden, the famous British critic. 
 He wrote: It seems as if a few hours were too short a 
 time to allow of real acquaintance with so large an out- 
 put of mind. But I have read it all with eager interest, 
 and with close attention — breaking off last night and resum- 
 ing my reading at five this morning. It is a piece of his- 
 tory lifted into drama with, I am sure, remarkable fidelity, 
 and certainly with remarkable vividness. All the characters 
 live, and the action does not flag or falter. There is rare 
 strength and dignity, with a touch of hidden tenderness and 
 pathos, in Calvin ; and I can well believe your Servetus to be 
 the real Servetus. The love of La Fontaine and your crea- 
 tion, Idelette — a nest in the storm and rocking trees — is a 
 strenuous love, and it is duly subordinated to the tragic in- 
 terests. I seem to understand the life of Geneva better than 
 I ever did before, and I thank you for a possession of endur- 
 ing value. 
 
 XII. 
 
 This, with the other appreciations of Dr. Shields's work 
 in preaching, in teaching, and in literature, have been given, 
 lest the reader might think of him as a mere dilettante in all 
 these lines of work, so versatile was his genius and so varied 
 his avocations. The evidence adduced, to which much might 
 be added, is quite sufficient to prove the contrary. Never- 
 theless, in this age of high specialization, the wide scope of 
 Dr. Shields's interests and activities had something to do 
 with the interest taken in that which was his life work. 
 Too many concluded, on insufficient grounds, that no man 
 could do the basic and thorough work which he aimed to 
 do, when his energies were so engaged elsewhere. The 
 
lxii Charles Woodruff Shields. 
 
 day of the polymath had gone, and finite powers must be con- 
 tent with knowing little about many things if they were to 
 grasp much about anything. Such a view, widely preva- 
 lent, is the worst heresy of our times, and is the force which 
 has debased our intellectual standards to a level on which 
 charlatanism thrives. No high standard of either knowledge, 
 judgment, or expression is possible unless set by men of 
 extensive learning, and intensive study within a broad field. 
 Moreover, professional and technical investigation, the re- 
 sults of the highest specializations, are themselves legitimate 
 subjects of examination. No scholar is in greater danger 
 than he who confines himself exclusively to work within 
 narrow bounds; and just such men suddenly, in the natural 
 and overmastering desire for generalization, are they who 
 proceed to establish great principles on insufficient data. The 
 best antidote for such rashness is in exactly the line of work 
 which Dr. Shields essayed to do, and in just the equipment 
 which he sought to provide for the comparative method as 
 applied to determining the order and value of the sciences, 
 human and natural. To judge him the court must be at least 
 as well trained in the principles of a transcendental and 
 metaphysical philosophy as he was. So far is this true that 
 it would be almost impossible to draw a jury of such suffi- 
 cient intelligence as to fit it for trying the case. In his field 
 of inquiry Dr. Shields found that, often, if not always, it 
 had been necessary to exchange the advocate for the judge. 
 Men like Locke, Descartes, Leibnitz, Berkeley, and above 
 all, Butler, were quite as much philosophers as apologetes if 
 not more so; and did not hesitate to sit in judgment on the 
 case which they themselves presented. If Dr. Shields found 
 himself compelled at times to a similar course, his capacity 
 for umpirage was due to the broad sympathies, the exten- 
 sive learning, and the inclusive experience of life, the phases 
 of which have been indicated if not described. 
 
 The passion for systematized knowledge is as old as civili- 
 zation, and the effort to unify science began with Plato. 
 From his day to this the list of writers who have attempted a 
 
A Biographical Sketch. lxiii 
 
 classification of the sciences is unbroken. The pamphlet en- 
 titled "The Order of the Sciences," which Dr. Shields pub- 
 lished in i8Sj, was the first essay made in America to deal 
 with the question. Had the author but lived a year longer he 
 would have had the gratification of reading in Professor 
 Robert Flint's history of the subject an appreciative tribute 
 to the work. Dr. Flint had evidently not seen the later 
 modifications of the " Order," and the changes made in the 
 theory of their development, which was published in 
 various journals, and are now given in the author's final 
 revision, partly in this volume and chiefly in the preceding 
 one. Nevertheless, in Dr. Flint's exhaustive treatise Dr. 
 Shields is first among the American names ; and to his some- 
 what embryonic outline the most respectful consideration is 
 given, accompanied by high praise. What is even more 
 striking is the fact that the definition of philosophy as " scien- 
 tia scientiarum," a definition much disputed by Dr. Shields's 
 American critics, is adopted by the learned Scotchman as a 
 matter of course, a definition requiring no defence. 
 
 In Flint's judgment, the treatise, small and merely intro- 
 ductory as it is, ranks among the best ; and he declares that 
 while its exhibition of the scheme of scientific distribution is 
 clear and skilful, its criticism of other classifications is also 
 discriminating and incisive. In the order of time and the 
 estimate of capable critics, as well as by the further elabora- 
 tion of his subject, Dr. Shields appears to be the Nestor and 
 founder of this department of philosophy in our country. 
 Of course, Flint and Shields, alike in accepting " scientia 
 scientiarum " as a definition of philosophy, are also alike in 
 confining that definition to theoretical philosophy, " as a 
 scheme of the sciences, as an inquiry into the nature and 
 limits of knowledge, and as a doctrine of being and becoming 
 — or, in other words, philosophy as positive, critical, and 
 metaphysical." Both were well aware that this, while the 
 most of philosophy, is not the whole of it; that "practical 
 applicability is a necessary consequence of theoretical accu- 
 racy." The quotations are from the former of the two 
 
lxiv Charles Woodruff Shields. 
 
 authors, but the latter has in his second volume, and in con- 
 versation, repeatedly said the same thing. Indeed, had Dr. 
 Flint ever seen Dr. Shields's second volume, he would have 
 recognized a close kinship of mind with the earlier writer. 
 Neither would surrender an inch of the territory won by 
 sound theory to the pragmatic meddlers who, in their as- 
 sumptions, discard not merely the relations of the sciences, 
 but even the conditions of knowledge and the very nature 
 of both existence and causation, as immaterial to the con- 
 cept of a universe and its order. Difficulties must needs 
 arise, and they can never be composed either by observation 
 or by analysis ; there must be a synthesis, and it can never 
 be reached by apathy and neglect. 
 
 The great task which the author set for himself early in 
 life was completed in his old age when he had prepared the 
 following pages for the press. It had not occurred to him 
 to preface their publication by any apology for the book ; 
 his work was no longer tentative, and had received the en- 
 comiums of so many able critics on the continent of Europe, 
 in Great Britain, and at home, that he might justly feel his 
 place to be assured. Moreover, he was a man of apostolic 
 temper, clear as to his theme and its bearing, faithful in the 
 performance of a plain duty which had been revealed to 
 him in the most searching self-examination. Not given to 
 polemics, he was nevertheless a master in attack and argu- 
 ment, fond of the fray, and the last to leave the field. To 
 the three volumes of the " Final Philosophy " he gave the 
 best of his life, and by their contents he wished to be judged. 
 It is not likely that posthumous opinion, any more than that 
 of his contemporaries, will go to the extreme of honeyed 
 panegyric. His subject is too abstruse and recondite for 
 any general agreement thereon to be easily reached ; but 
 that he will be gratefully regarded as an able surveyor in the 
 field, and that he will be felt to have established many impor- 
 tant principles of procedure, seems certain to the present 
 writer. His claim to remembrance in the United States as 
 a pioneer is undoubted; and furthermore, even those who 
 
A Biographical Sketch. lxv 
 
 cannot accept his main thesis are sure to appreciate the in- 
 cidental value of an erudition marked by sympathy, richness, 
 and a cosmic scope. 
 
 This memoir is not the place in which to detail either the 
 praise or the blame, the assent or dissent, with which his 
 most important work has been received. In fact, until now 
 the work has been incomplete, and with this volume it is for 
 the first time before the public in its entirety. There may, 
 in consequence, be some revision of opinion ; if so the object 
 of this brief memoir will have been secured, provided the 
 chosen few, who alone can appreciate and judge the life 
 work of Dr. Shields, derive from it any information likely to 
 elucidate the spirit in which he began and finished his task. 
 
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