​SHELDON, CHARLES MONROE (1857-⁠), American Congregational clergyman, was born in Wellsville, New York, on the 26th of February, 1857. Graduating at Brown University in 1883 and at Andover Theological Seminary in 1886, he was pastor of a church at Waterbury, Vermont, in 1886-1888, and in 1889 became pastor of the Central Congregational Church of Topeka, Kansas. He is well known as the author of a number of widely read books of fiction, which at the same time inculcate an uncompromising obedience to the precepts of the Gospel in everyday life. Of these, In His Steps (1896), though not the earliest, is perhaps the best, and it is this one which first brought him into prominence.