Page:The Urantia Book, 1st Edition.djvu/343

Rh When these administrative and jurisdictional difficulties have been placed in the hands of the conciliators for study and adjudication, they are supreme in authority. But they will not formulate a decision until all the evidence has been heard, and there is absolutely no limit to their authority to call witnesses from anywhere and everywhere. And while their decisions may not be appealed, sometimes matters so develop that the commission closes its records at a given point, concludes its opinions, and transfers the whole question to the higher tribunals of the realm.

The commissioners' decisions are placed on the planetary records and, if necessary, are put into effect by the divine executioner. His power is very great, and the range of his activities on an inhabited world is very wide. Divine executioners are masterful manipulators of that which is in the interests of that which ought to be. Their work is sometimes carried out for the apparent welfare of the realm, and sometimes their acts on the worlds of time and space are difficult of explanation. Though executing decrees in defiance of neither natural law nor the ordained usages of the realm, they do ofttimes effect their strange doings and enforce the mandates of the conciliators in accordance with the higher laws of the system administration.

2. Conciliators to the System Headquarters. From service on the evolutionary worlds these commissions of four are advanced to duty on a system headquarters. Here they have much work to do, and they prove to be the understanding friends of men, angels, and other spirit beings. The referee trios are not so much concerned with personal differences as with group contentions and with misunderstandings arising between different orders of creatures; and on a system headquarters there live both spiritual and material beings, as well as the combined types, such as the Material Sons.

The moment the Creators bring into existence evolving individuals with the power of choice, that moment a departure is made from the smooth working of divine perfection; misunderstandings are certain to arise, and provision for the fair adjustment of these honest differences of viewpoint must be made. We should all remember that the all-wise and all-powerful Creators could have made the local universes just as perfect as Havona. No conciliating commissions need function in the central universe. But the Creators did not choose in their all-wisdom to do this. And while they have produced universes which abound in differences and teem with difficulties, they have likewise provided the mechanisms and the means for composing all these differences and for harmonizing all this seeming confusion.

3. The Constellation Conciliators. From service in the systems the conciliators are promoted to the adjudication of the problems of a constellation, taking up the minor difficulties arising between its one hundred systems of inhabited worlds. Not many problems developing on the constellation headquarters fall under their jurisdiction, but they are kept busy going from system to system gathering evidence and preparing preliminary statements. If the contention is honest, if the difficulties arise out of sincere differences of opinion and honest diversity of viewpoints, no matter how few persons may be involved, no matter how apparently trivial the misunderstanding, a conciliating commission can always be had to pass upon the merits of the controversy.

4. Conciliators to the Local Universes. In this larger work of a universe the commissioners are of great assistance to both the Melchizedeks and the Magis-