The Seraphic Hosts

39:0.1As far as we are cog­nizant, the In­fi­nite Spirit, as per­son­al­ized on the lo­cal uni­verse head­quar­ters, in­tends to pro­duce uni­formly per­fect ser­a­phim, but for some un­known rea­son these se­raphic off­spring are very di­verse. This di­ver­sity may be a re­sult of the un­known in­ter­po­si­tion of evolv­ing ex­pe­ri­en­tial De­ity; if so, we can­not prove it. But we do ob­serve that, when ser­a­phim have been sub­jected to ed­u­ca­tional tests and train­ing dis­ci­pline, they un­fail­ingly and dis­tinctly clas­sify into the fol­low­ing seven groups:

39:0.21. Su­preme Ser­a­phim.

39:0.32. Su­pe­rior Ser­a­phim.

39:0.43. Super­vi­sor Ser­a­phim.

39:0.54. Ad­min­is­tra­tor Ser­a­phim.

39:0.65. Plan­e­tary Helpers.

39:0.76. Tran­si­tion Min­is­ters.

39:0.87. Ser­a­phim of the Fu­ture.

39:0.9To say that any one ser­a­phim is in­fe­rior to an an­gel of any other group would hardly be true. Nev­er­the­less ev­ery an­gel is at first ser­vice-lim­ited to the group of orig­i­nal and in­her­ent clas­si­fi­ca­tion. My se­raphic as­so­ciate in the prepa­ra­tion of this state­ment, Man­otia, is a su­preme ser­a­phim and one­time func­tioned only as a su­preme ser­a­phim. By ap­pli­ca­tion and de­voted ser­vice she has, one by one, achieved all seven of the se­raphic ser­vices, hav­ing func­tioned in well-nigh ev­ery av­enue of ac­tiv­ity open to a ser­a­phim, and now holds the com­mis­sion of as­so­ciate chief of ser­a­phim on Uran­tia.

39:0.10Hu­man be­ings some­times find it hard to un­der­stand that a cre­ated ca­pac­ity for higher-level min­istry does not nec­es­sar­ily im­ply abil­ity to func­tion on rel­a­tively lower ser­vice lev­els. Man be­gins life as a help­less in­fant; hence ev­ery mor­tal at­tain­ment must em­brace all ex­pe­ri­en­tial pre­req­ui­sites; ser­a­phim have no such pread­ult life—no child­hood. They are, how­ever, ex­pe­ri­en­tial crea­tures, and by ex­pe­ri­ence and through ad­di­tional ed­u­ca­tion they can aug­ment their di­vine and in­her­ent en­dow­ment of abil­ity by the ex­pe­ri­en­tial ac­quire­ment of func­tional skill in one or more of the se­raphic ser­vices.

39:0.11Af­ter be­ing com­mis­sioned, ser­a­phim are as­signed to the re­serves of their in­her­ent group. Those of plan­e­tary and ad­min­is­tra­tor sta­tus of­ten serve for long pe­ri­ods as orig­i­nally clas­si­fied, but the higher the in­her­ent func­tion level, the more per­sis­tently do the an­gelic min­is­ters seek as­sign­ment to the lower or­ders of uni­verse ser­vice. Es­pe­cially do they de­sire as­sign­ment to the re­serves of the plan­e­tary helpers, and if suc­cess­ful they en­roll in the ce­les­tial schools at­tached to the head­quar­ters of the Plan­e­tary Prince of some evo­lu­tion­ary world. Here they be­gin the study of the lan­guages, his­tory, and lo­cal habits of the races of man­kind. Ser­a­phim must ac­quire knowl­edge and gain ex­pe­ri­ence much as do hu­man be­ings. They are not far re­moved from you in cer­tain per­son­al­ity at­tri­butes. And they all crave to start at the bot­tom, on the low­est pos­si­ble level of min­istry; thus may they hope to achieve the high­est pos­si­ble level of ex­pe­ri­en­tial des­tiny.