Page:The Urantia Book, 1st Edition.djvu/494

428 2. Court Advisers. These are the seraphic advisers and helpers attached to all orders of adjudication, from the conciliators up to the highest tribunals of the realm. It is not the purpose of such tribunals to determine punitive sentences but rather to adjudicate honest differences of opinion and to decree the everlasting survival of ascending mortals. Herein lies the duty of the court advisers: to see that all charges against mortal creatures are stated in justice and adjudicated in mercy. In this work they are closely associated with the High Commissioners, Spirit-fused ascendant mortals serving in the local universe.

The seraphic court advisers serve extensively as defenders of mortals. Not that there ever exists any disposition to be unfair to the lowly creatures of the realms, but while justice demands the adjudication of every default in the climb towards divine perfection, mercy requires that every such misstep be fairly adjudged in accordance with the creature nature and the divine purpose. These angels are the exponents and exemplification of the element of mercy inherent in divine justice—of fairness based on the knowledge of the underlying facts of personal motives and racial tendencies.

This order of angels serves from the councils of the Planetary Princes to the highest tribunals of the local universe, while their associates of the Seraphic Corps of Completion function in the higher realms of Orvonton, even to the courts of the Ancients of Days on Uversa.

3. Universe Orientators. These are the true friends and postgraduate counselors of all those ascending creatures who are pausing for the last time on Salvington, in their universe of origin, as they stand on the brink of the spirit adventure stretching out before them in the vast superuniverse of Orvonton. And at such a time many an ascender has a feeling which mortals could understand only by comparison with the human emotion of nostalgia. Behind lie the realms of achievement, realms grown familiar by long service and morontia attainment; ahead lies the challenging mystery of a greater and vaster universe.

It is the task of the universe orientators to facilitate the passage of the ascending pilgrims from the attained to the unattained level of universe service, to help these pilgrims in making those kaleidoscopic adjustments in the comprehension of meanings and values inherent in the realization that a first-stage spirit being stands, not at the end and climax of the local universe morontia ascent, but rather at the very bottom of the long ladder of spiritual ascent to the Universal Father on Paradise.

Many of the Seraphington graduates, members of the Seraphic Corps of Completion who are associated with these seraphim, engage in extensive teaching in certain Salvington schools concerned with the preparation of the creatures of Nebadon for the relationships of the next universe age.

4. The Teaching Counselors. These angels are the invaluable assistants of the spiritual teaching corps of the local universe. Teaching counselors are secretaries to all orders of teachers, from the Melchizedeks and the Trinity Teacher Sons down to the morontia mortals who are assigned as helpers to those of their kind who are just behind them in the scale of ascendant life. You will first see these associate teaching seraphim on some one of the seven mansion worlds surrounding Jerusem.

These seraphim become associates of the division chiefs of the numerous educational and training institutions of the local universes, and they are at-