Editorial February 16, 1974 ISSUE

A Healing Reaction to Barbarity

Naomi Price

"What kind of person could do a thing like that? How can anyone be so inhumane, destructive, barbaric? It's unbelievable!"

Society turns away in horror and amazement from reports of vandalism and atrocity. Civilized people find it hard to comprehend how any sane man, woman, or child could possibly be motivated by such bestial thoughts as to commit the senseless, destructive, brutal acts against fellowmen and their property that we sometimes hear about today.

Such lack of comprehension is healthy. It indicates a deep-seated faith in the innate goodness of man's true nature. It is a reaction against the claim of evil to be able to govern mankind, and provides a basis for proper human action to be taken to rid the world of barbarity. Mrs. Eddy writes in Science and Health, "Disbelief in error destroys error, and leads to the discernment of Truth."^{Science and Health, p. 346;} And, farther on in the same book she says, "When we come to have more faith in the truth of being than we have in error, more faith in Spirit than in matter, more faith in living than in dying, more faith in God than in man, then no material suppositions can prevent us from healing the sick and destroying error."^{ibid., p. 368:}