and the reformatory echool has done splendid service for lads who have committed a first offence. Dr A. E. Gregory, who in 1900 succeeded Dr Stephenson, has seen remarkable progress in all departments of the great institution under his care. “Sisters of the People” and deaconesses, for whom there is a training home at Ilkley, founded by Dr Stephenson in 1902, have also done much to help in these modern developments of Methodism.
The Chapel Committee, which has its headquarters in Manchester, has general oversight of 9070 trusts with property valued at about twenty-five millions. The number of Methodist chapels in 1818 was 2000; in 1839, 3500; in 1910, 8606. The sitting increased from a million in 1851 to about 2,375,000 in 1910. The outlay on trust property in that period was more than fifteen millions. Debts amounting to £3,266,013 have been paid off since 1854. More than half a million has been advanced in loans and of this nothing has been lost. In 1907 and 1908 £1,292,282 was spent on trust property, and of this £892,114 was contributed. London Methodism owes more than can be told to the Metropolitan Chapel Building Fund which was founded in 1861. The names of the Rev. William Arthur, Sir Francis Lycett, Sir W. McArthur, will always be associated with this fund which has promoted the erection of some hundred new chapels. The Extension Fund, established in 1874, largely by the help of Sir Francis Lycett and Mr Mewburn, has done similar work for country towns and villages. About two thousand chapels have been assisted with grants and loans. Similar work has been done in Scotland by a fund established in 1878. North and South Wales also have their Chapel Funds. A secretary and committee were appointed in 1910 to carry out various developments of work in London. The work of the Metropolitan Chapel Building Fund and the London Mission is taken over by this new committee.
John Wesley felt a lively interest in the Sunday schools which began to spring up all over England in the last years of his life. The first rules for the management of Methodist Sunday schools were issued by the Conference in 1827. In 1837 there were 3339 Methodist Sunday schools with 59,297 teachers and 341,443 scholars. A quarter of the preaching places, however, had no schools. The Education Committee was formed in 1838 to take oversight of the work in day and Sunday schools. The Methodist Sunday School Union, founded in 1873, was formed into a department in 1907 and is doing much to guide and develop the work. The Temperance Committee was formed in 1875; a temperance secretary was set apart in 1890. The department has its monthly organ and has its offices in Westminster. The Wesley Guild Movement, established in 1901, has its headquarters in Leeds and is doing a great work for the young people of Methodism.
The centenary of Wesley’s death was kept in 1891. Memorable services were held in City Road Chapel, which was restored and rendered more worthy of its historic position. Wesley’s statue was placed in the forecourt. In 1898 the rooms in Wesley’s house, where he studied and where he died, were set apart as a Methodist Museum. The first Methodist Oecumenical Conference was held in London in 1881, the second in Washington in 1891, the third in London in 1901, the fourth being fixed for Toronto in 1911. The Methodist Assembly which met in Wesley’s Chapel, London, in 1909 brought the branches of British Methodism together with good results. A considerable extension of the three years' term has been secured in certain cases by a legal device for escaping the provisions of the eleventh clause of Wesley’s Deed Poll, but some more satisfactory method of dealing with the subject is under consideration.
The great event of recent Methodist history was the Twentieth Century Fund inaugurated by Sir Robert W. Perks in 1898. To his unwearying zeal and business ability the triumph secured was chiefly due. The Rev. Albert Clayton, the secretary of the fund, lavished his strength on his vast task and the total income exceeded £1,073.782. The grants were: General Chapel Committee, £290,617; Missionary Society, £102,656; Education Committee, £193,705; Home Missions, £96,872; Children’s Home, £48,436. The Royal Aquarium at Westminster was purchased and a central hall and church house as the headquarters of Methodism erected. For this object £242,206 was set apart.
Bibliography.—Lives of Wesley, Hampson (1791), Coke and Moore (1792), Whitehead (1793–1796). R. Southey (1820), Moore (1824), Walton (1831), Overton (1891), Wedgwood (1870), L. Tyerman (1870). Lelièvre (1868, 1900), J. Telford (1886, 1899). W. H. Fitchett (1906), Winchester (1906).
Histories of Methodism.—Dr George Smith, Dr Abel Stevens. J. Telford, W. J. Townsend, H. B. Workman and G. Eayrs, A New History of Methodism (1909); Poetical Works of J. and C. Wesley; Wesley’s Works (1771–1774, 1809–1813; ed. Benson, 1829–1831; ed. Jackson 1856–1862). Standard ed. of Wesley’s Journal (ed. N. Curnock, 1910); Cambridge Modern History, vol. vi.; Luke Tyerman, Life of George Whitefield (1876); J. H. Overton, The English Church in the Eighteenth Century; J. H. Overton and F. Relton, The English Church (1711–1800); J. S. Simon, Revival of Religion in England in the Eighteenth Century; W. E. H. Lecky, History of England in the Eighteenth Century; J. H. Rigg, The Living Wesley, The Churchmanship of John Wesley; R. Green, Bibliography of the Works of J. and C. Wesley; Wesley’s Veterans, Lives of Early Methodist Preachers (Finsbury Library). (J. T.*)
WESSEL, JOHAN[1] (c. 1420–1489), Dutch theologian, was born at Groningen. He was educated at the famous school at Deventer, which was under the supervision of the Brothers of Common Life, and in close connexion with the convent of Mount St Agnes at Zwolle, where Thomas à Kempis was then living. At Deventer, where the best traditions of the 14th century mysticism were still cultivated, Wessel imbibed that earnest devotional mysticism which was the basis of his theology
and which drew him irresistibly, after a busy life, to spend his
last days among the Friends of God in the Low Countries. From
Dcventer he went to the Dominican school at Cologne to be
taught the Thomist theology, and came in contact with humanism.
He learnt Greek from monks v, ho had been driven out of
Greece, and Hebrew from some Jews. The Thomist theology
sent him to study Augustine, and his Greek reading led him to
Plato, sources which largely enriched his ow'n theological system.
Interest in the disputes between the realists and the nominalists
in Paris induced him to go to that city, where he remained for
sixteen years as scholar and teacher.
There he eventually took
the nominalist side, prompted as much by his mystical anti ecclesiastical
tendencies as by any metaphysical insight; for
the nominalists were then the anti-papal party. A desire to
know more about humanism sent him to Rome, where in 1470
he was the intimate friend of Italian scholars and under the protection of Cardinals Bessarion and Francis Delia Rovere (general of the Franciscan order and afterwards Pope Sixtus IV.). It is said that Sixtus would have gladly made Wessel a bishop, but that he had no desire for any ecclesiastical preferment. From Rome he returned to Paris, and speedily became a famous teacher, gathering round him a band of enthusiastic young students, among whom was Reuchlin. In 1475 he was at Basel and in 1476 at Heidelberg teaching philosophy
in the university. As old age approached he came to have a growing dislike to the wordy theological strife which surrounded him, and turned away from that university discipline, "non studia sacrarum literarum sed studio rum commixtae corruption es." After thirty years of academic life he went back to his native Groningen, and spent the rest of his life partly as director in a nuns' cloister there and partly in the convent
of St Agnes at Zwolle. He was welcomed as the most renowned scholar of his time, and it was fabled that he had travelled through all lands, Egypt as well as Greece, gathering everywhere the fruits of all sciences—
"a man of rare erudition, "
says the title-page of the first edition of his collected works,
"who in the shadow of papal darkness was called the light of the world." His remaining years were spent amid a circle of warm admirers, friends and disciples, to whom he imparted the mystical theology, the zeal for higher learning and the deep devotional spirit which characterized his ow-n life. He died on the 4th of October 1489, with the confession on his lips,
“I know only Jesus the crucified.” He is buried in the middle of the choir of the church of the “Geestlichen Maegden,” whose director he had been.
Wessel has been called one of the “reformers before the Reformation,” and the title is justifiable if by it is meant a man of deeply spiritual life, who protested against the growing paganizing of the papacy, the superstitious and magical uses of the sacraments, the authority of ecclesiastical tradition, and that tendency in later scholastic theology to lay greater stress, in a doctrine of justification, upon the instrumentality of the human will than on the objective work of Christ for man’s salvation. His own theology was, however, essentially medieval in type, and he never grasped that experimental thought of justification on which Reformation theology rests.
Martin Luther in 1521 published a collection of Wessel’s writings[2] which had been preserved as relics by his friends, and said that if he (Luther) had written nothing before he read them, people might well have thought that he had stolen all his ideas from them. The books are of an aphoristical character, the ideas being rather mechanically
- ↑ His correct name was Wessel Harmens Gansfort (or Ganzevort), the Christian name Wessel being a corruption of Basilius, and the surname Gansfort being that of a Westphalian village from which his family came.
- ↑ The collection included De providentia, De causis et effectibus incarnationis et passionis, De dignitate et potestate ecclesiastica, De sacramente, poenitentiae, Quae sit vera communio sanctorum, De purgatorio and a number of letters.
