9. The Home Mission and Contingent Fund was insti- tuted in 1756 and remodelled in 1856. The committee consists of the president and the secretary of the Confer- ence, the ex-presidents, the treasurers, the general sec- retarj'and the financial secretary of the fund, the treas- urers and secretary of the Fund for the Extension of Methodism in Great Britain, with fifteen ministers and tifteen laymen for London, and thirty-five ministers and thirty-five laymen for the country. The secretarj' is the Kev. Alexander McAulay. This fund is to assist the dependent circuits in maintaining the ministration of the Gospel, to provide means for employing additional ministers, and to meet various contingencies. It is mainly supported by the yearly collection, b)' the Home Missionary collections made after sermons and
WESNA
953
WESSEL
meetings, and by subscriptions, legacies, and juvenile associations. The total income of the fund in 1879 was £33,314 8s. 9d., and the total expenditure £33,318 125. lOd.
VI. Literature. This is copiously exhibited in Os- boru's Wesley an Bibliography (Lond. 18(59, 8vo), See also Morgan, Bibliotheca Canadensis (Ottawa, 18G7, 8vo) : and compare Methodism. (G. J. S.)
Wesna, in Slavonic mythology, is a sister of Mora- na: they represent spring and winter, or life and death, under whose protection human life stands. Wesna guards the beginning of life, Morana its end. She rocks men to sleep with beautiful hymns and suitable pictures.
Wessel, Johann ( 1 ), was unquestionably the most important among the men of German extraction who helped to prepare the way for the Reformation. The circumstances connected with his private life are involved in great uncertainty, insoraucn tliat even his names have been made the subject of inquirj' (John, Hermanni; Gansevort, Basilius). He was born in 1400 or 1420, probablv the latter year. His birthplace was Groningen, where the very house in which he was born is yet shown. He was orphaned at an early age, but received into the house of a kinswoman named Oda or Odilla Clautes, and sent to a school at Zwoll, which was conducted by the Brothers of the Common Life, and had a good reputation. He there not only devoted himself to scientitic pursuits, but also to the promotion of the religious life, being aided in the latter respect by Thom- as a Kempis, who sojourned in the neighborhood of Zwoll. In time he came to fill the place of an under- teacher, but unpleasant surroundings and a thirst for greater knowledge drove him away from Zwoll to Co- logne, where he studied Greek and Hebrew, chiefly un- der the direction of private tutors, and also examined the libraries. His habit was to note the results of his readings and impressions in memoranda, which he con- tinued to keep to the end of his life. The independence of thought which such a method of study displayed was yet further cultivated by the study of Plato, the great antagonist of scholasticism and agent in the restoration of theology, and the simple and unadorned mystic Ru- pert of Deutz (q. v.). It was not possible, however, that he should find in bigoted Cologne a soil suitable for the propagation of his views. A call to Heidelberg was extended to liim, but he was not yet ready to de- vote himself exclusively to the work of teaching, and felt himself attracted to Paris, where the controversy between nominalists and realists had broken out afresh. He paused for a little while at Louvain, and then has- tened to Paris, actuated by the desire to gain his coun- trymen Henry of Zomeren and Nicholas of Utrecht, both famous professors, over to realism ; but the end was that he became a nominalist himself, and continued to be such while he lived. He remained in Paris about sixteen years, not sustaining an altogether receptive at- titude, but doing liis part to shape the mind of the com- ing generation. He was most powerfully stimulated by association with cardinal Bessarion, Rovere, then gen- eral of the Franciscans, but afterwards pope Sixtus IV, and with younger men like Reuchlin and K. Agricola. He visited other French cities also, e. g. Angers, in or- der to take part in disputations, and two years before the close of the pontificate of Paul II came to Rome. Here he found the most advanced culture of the time, but also the most evident and shocking corruption in the Church. On his return to Paris he witnessed the attempt of Louis XI to put down nominalism by force. In 1475 he was at Basle with Reuchlin, and later at Heidelberg as a member of the philosophical faculty. His combativeness as a debater had in the meantime earned for him the title of Magister Contradictionum. He soon afterwards retired to privacy in his native town of Groningen, and spent his remaining days in arrang- ing his views into a defensible form, and in the cultiva- tion of a profound pietj'. All the works from his pen
which we possess were probably written in this period, when the mystical trait in his nature was becoming prominent. He is said to have been the physician of the bishop David of Burgundy, and in a former period of Rovere (see above), which circumstance probably de- terred tlie inquisitors of Cologne from proceeding against him, as they did against J. von Wesel (q. v.), and as Wessel thought they would. He maintained a large correspondence and received many visitors. He also contributed much towards the formation of the charac- ters of R. Agricola, Alexander Hegius, Hermann Busch, etc., with reference to whose influence in the future he predicted that his young friend Oestendorp would live to see the time when scholasticism, i. e. the teachings of Aquinas,- Bonaventure, etc., should be rejected by all truly Christian divines. Before he died he was assailed by doubts respecting all the verities of the Christian faith, with which he struggled almost despairinglj', but which he conquered with the cry, '• I know nothing but Jesus, the crucified one." He died in peace, but with- out having received the papal absolution, Oct. 4, 1489, and was buried in the Church of the Nunnery at Gro- ningen. After his death the mendicant monks subject- ed his writings to their rage, and probably destroyed a portion of them, though a sufficient quantity of them was preserved by the devotion of his pupils to enable us to estimate the character of the man. The first col- lection was ])ublished by Luther, omitting an essay on the Lord's supper, which was added for the first time in the Groningen edition of 1G14.