A Group of Christian Scientists, while traveling by automobile one day, witnessed what seemed to be a serious accident. Although they had learned through Christian Science that one should not repeat error, unless the repetition is needed to emphasize the opposite truth, some of them began to recall similar incidents in their own and others' experience. But one, an alert practitioner, uttered this stern but loving rebuke: "Destroy the negative!"
In reply to their look of bewilderment she explained that the camera enthusiast not only files away his pictures, which constitute a record of vacations, trips, people, and events, but keeps in a safe place any negatives he might wish to use again. And he keeps only those worthy of re-using. She then explained that the negatives, from which pictures can be made, might be likened somewhat to the good thoughts and memories we store away in consciousness. Wrong thoughts and all discordant mental pictures, including even the memory of them, should be destroyed in thought so that they cannot reappear in our experience.
She then called attention to a passage in the Bible wherein God commanded Moses, "Speak unto the children of Israel, and say unto them, When ye are passed over Jordan into the land of Canaan; then ye shall drive out all the inhabitants of the land from before you, and destroy all their pictures, and destroy all their molten images, and quite pluck down all their high places" (Num.33:51, 52). And she also called attention to a correlative statement in the Christian Science textbook by Mrs. Eddy (p. 391): "Blot out the images of mortal thought and its beliefs in sickness and sin. Then, when thou art delivered to the judgment of Truth, Christ, the judge will say, 'Thou art whole!'"
