An important point in many sports is to follow through. If a golfer could stop his swing just at the point of impact, for example, the ball would merely topple off the tee. But to follow through gives both impulsion and direction to the stroke.

And so it is in Christian Science. A mental rehearsal of the facts of divine Science isn't enough. We have to follow through—understanding their divinely impelled power and giving them direct and specific application to the case.

In the metaphysical practice of Christian Science, we become aware of the power of God, divine Mind, expressed by the Christ, Truth. Then the omnipotence of infinite Spirit is revealed to human consciousness and dispels sickness and sin.

Prayerful treatment involves much more than just thinking about spiritual truths in the hope that somehow a material situation will change for the better. In the first place, treatment doesn't attempt to manipulate matter. The practitioner begins with God. Then, treatment is divine Mind's own revelation to us, through the Christ, of the perfection of its own creation. Such prayer involves a change of consciousness that rises above belief in evil and its material conditions. Healing is a revelation of the divine perfection that already exists independent of the physical senses. Sometimes it is instantaneous and obviates the need for arguing for perfection.

It is unthinkable that intelligent Mind, Love, could ever fail to govern its own ideas harmoniously. Divine Love never errs, never lacks any power to be itself and to express itself through the real man. Eternal Mind originates its own activity and power, and we need never doubt its ability to control all that it creates. Hence, the power of Mind's divine ideas to dispel the errors of belief that constitute disease in no way derives from any willful effort on our part. However, in order to follow through with our prayerful treatment, we have to apply the truths to the problems at hand specifically, intelligently, humbly, until the human mind yields up its false beliefs and healing occurs.

The practitioner does not mentally project spiritual truths in an endeavor to affect matter as though it were something. God, Spirit, is All, so matter and evil must be nothing. Error is only a false sense of substance. As illusion, it has no substance. Reality is what God created, and it requires no treatment or changing. Only false views need correction. Prayerful realization of the perfection of Mind and its creation enlightens consciousness so that errors of belief are dispelled and replaced with God's preexisting spiritual facts.

In our follow-through we realize that the practitioner's treatment is impelled by Mind, Principle. This prayerful yielding to the Christ, Truth, reveals spiritual truths relevant to the case. The practitioner rejoices in the divine facts of Love's allness. Getting a material sense of self out of the way, he or she leaves the field to God's fiat, Mind's resistless revelation of His power.

When Christ Jesus said, "Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free," ^{John 8:32.} he indicated that truth does the freeing. The teachings of Jesus and the healings he brought about prove to spiritualized thought that there can't be anything real or final about evil, since God and all He creates remains eternally perfect. Nor can there be a devil to cause evil, since God, Love, is good, the only cause. Evil, then, must be a lie, an ignorant sense of the good that is really there all the time.

Proof that evil is a lie requires a specific denial of evil because of the tenacity of material beliefs. Mortal mind, in which errors of belief inhere, is ignorance of God and is not a real entity. It never belonged to man. God is the only Mind, and a wrong sense of creation is nonintelligence, illusion. We follow through with the truth that the only real is always some flawless idea of God. When we come to see that mortal mind does not exist, even as an illusion, and that evil and matter are absolutely nothing, the truth of God's allness floods consciousness with healing light. Mrs. Eddy writes, "The nothingness of nothing is plain; but we need to understand that error is nothing, and that its nothingness is not saved, but must be demonstrated in order to prove the somethingness—yea, the allness—of Truth." ^{Science and Health, p. 346.}

As we prayerfully follow through with this spiritual understanding, keeping our "eye on the ball," as it were, we cannot miss the mark of practical demonstration, for our prayerful, scientific work reflects the direction of all-powerful Truth.

There is, of course, no formula involved in this work, because the ideas flowing through prayerful understanding are limitless, and the right specific idea applicable to each case comes through inspiration.

A practitioner also affirms that Truth is irreversible because there is nothing to reverse Truth. God and His perfect creation always have been universal and always will be, because the eternal God can never be less than All.