During his life Oetinger was regarded with respect approaching to reverence by his co-religionists as a phi- losopher and theologian, and he is still held in some es- timation. He sought to elucidate the Christian sj'stem by the speculations of Bijhme and Swedenborg; and he was f(md of comparing and contrasting the received sys- tems of secular philosophy with Christian philosophj', as so explained. It is only recently that attention has been excited towards his almost forgotten works. He was the theosophist of his age. His contemporaries called him the Magus of the South. He saj-s : " I have made the idea of life which prevails in the Bible the chief feature of my theology. The Bible treats of life : 1, God as the source of life ; 2, man as the conservatory of
the breath of life ; 3, sin as the estrangement of life from God; 4, grace as the communication of new life; 6, the Church as the society where the spirit of life works ; 6, the last things as the end and issue of life." "Magic," says the fantastic old man, "is the science of the friends of God. It is of secret wisdom. But it is the sublimest magic to separate yourself from yourself by means of the cross of Jesus Christ, and to bring the multitude of your thoughts into harmony with the love of Christ." "In antagonism to the sceptical and volatilizing ten- dency, he sought," says Hagenbach, " to hold firm the concrete individual, the real and the vigorous in aU their picturcsqueness, vividness, and sensuousness, so as to make the deeper and stronger impression upon the mind. Instead therefore of regarding scriptural de- scriptions of the kingdom of God and of the new birth as mere figures, and of dissolving them into abstract conceptions, as was done by the later translators of the Bible, . . . Oetinger regarded them as realities and facts; and while scepticism believed that it must trans- late the Biblical language into Western form, which could not easily happen without a diminution of the original meaning, Oetinger believed, on the other hand, that we must return to that Biblical view of things, and live in the very heart of it. His language is therefore sometimes dark, mysterious, and not comprehensible by every mind. He strives by it to represent everything in a new and original light, and in this effort he con- fesses that b}' the confusion of philosophic language it would be hard for one who is illuminated as by light- ning to speak with new tongues. Men must sometimes be satisfied with only small and weak beginnings, until the knowledge of the Lord shall cover the earth as the waves of the sea" (i, 39, 1, 39).
Oetinger was very fruitful as a mystical author. His works amount to seventj' in number, the titles of which betray his effort to combine supernatural and natural things in their higher unity ; or, as he himself expresses it,"metaphysics in connection with chemistrA-." Of these numerous works we notice Die unerforscJilichen Wege der Hei-unterlassutKj Gotles (Leips. 1734) : — A b/iss d, evanrjelischen Ordnung z. Wiedergeburt (ibid. 1735, 8vo) : — Erlddruncj d. Psalmen nach dem historischen Wortvei-- stande (Esslingen, 1748, and Heilbronn, 1756, 8vo) : — Inqnisitio in sensum communem et rationem pro judican- dii p/rilosopkorum theoris ad ?iormam Scripturce Sacrm (Tubingen, 1753, 8vo) : — Lj-ei^fache Sittenlehre nach der Natiir, nach der heiligen Schrift, nach Jesu Christo (Heilbronn, 1753, 8vo) : — Die Eulerische u. Frickische Philosophie iiber die Musik (Neuwied, 1761) : — Die Phi- losophie der Allen wiederkommend in der giildenen Zeit (Francf. 1762, 8vo): — Swedenborg^s u.anderer irdische u. himmlische Philosophie (ibid. 1765, 8vo) : — Theologia ex idea vitce deducta (ibid. 1765, 8vo ; transl. into German, Stuttg. 1852, 8vo) ; it is the best work of the author : — Beurtheilung der Lehre von dem Zustande nach dem Tode (1771, 8vo) : — Liber aurece catence Ilomeri de transmuta- tione metalloritm (1771, 8vo) : — Inbegiiff der Grundweis- heit aits den SchAften Jakob Bohms (Francf. 1774, 8vo) : — Gedanken von den Fdhigkeifen zu empfinden u. zu erken- , nen (ibid. 1775, 8vo) : — Biblisches v. emblematisches Wdr- terbuch dem Tellerischen entgegengesetzt (Francf. 1776; Stuttg. 1849). He translated also into German and an- notated the work of Swedenborg on the inhabitants of the earth, planets, and other stars (1771, 8vo). Oetin- ger's complete works were published at Keutlingcn in 1852 sq., and his theosophical.writings have been brought out at Stuttgard as follows : Sdmmtl. theosophische ISchrif- ten, Theologie a. d. Idee des Lebejis (1865).
See Neues Gelehrtes Eiiropa, vol. xv ; Closer, Wiirtem- bergisches Gelehrien-Lexikon, s. v. ; Hirsching, Ilandb. ; INIeusel, Lexikon, s. v. ; Hurst's Hagenbach, Ch. Hist. of the mh and 19th Centuries, i, 388-392, 481 sq.; kahnis, I/ist. German Protestantism, p. 108; Selbstbio- graphie, published by Hamberger (Stuttg. 1845) ; Auber- len, Die Theosophie Fr. Ch. Oetinger's nach ihren Grund- zUgen (Tubing. 1848). (J. H. W.)
(ETOSYRUS
311
OFFENCE
CEtOsyrus (Oiruffvpoc), the name of a divinity worshipped by the ancient Scythians, and identified with AjKiUo by Herodotus (iv, 59).
Oettinger, Edward Maria, a German bibliog- rapher, was born Nov. 19, 18U8, at Breslau, in Silesia, of Jewish parents. Having studied at the gymnasium of his native place, he went to Vienna, and joined the Ro- man Catholic Church. After 18-29 he edited different periodicals at Berlin, Hamburg, Manheim, and Leipsie, and wrote several dramas, novels, and romances. His poems, which he published under the title Buck der Liebe, were published at Leipsie in a tifth edition in 1850. Besides a historical work — Geschichfe des ddnischen Hofes von Christian II, his Friedrich VII (Hamburg, 1859, 8 vols.)— he published his famous bibliographical work, Bibliograjihie hiographique, ou dictionnaire de 26,000 ouvrages, 7-elatifs a Ihistoire de la vie puhlique ei privee des homines celkhres de tons les temiJs et de touies les nations (Leips. 1850 ; the same in 2 vols. Paris, 1866) :— Historisches Archiv, enthaltend ein systematisch-chro- nologisch geordnetes Verzeichniss von 17,000 der brauch- harsten Quellen zum Studium der Geschichfe (Carlsruhe, 1841) : — Moniteur des dates, contenant un million de ren- seignements biograjihiques, genial, et historiques (Dresden, 1866-1868, 6 vols.4to) — a work which, as a biographico- genealogico-historical lexicon, is not only indispensable to librarians, historians, and bibliographers, but which at its first appearance was unanimously praised as a gi- gantic work of German industry and scholarship. Oet- tinger died June 26, 1872. A supplement to his Moni- teur des dates is now published by Dr. H. Schramm, the biographer of Oettinger. See Literarischer Handiveiser (1872), p. 368; Kurz, Literaturgeschichte, vol. iv (see Index) ; Dr. K. Schiitze, Beutschland's Bichter und Bichterinnen, s. v. (B. P.)