The Spirit-Wrestlers themselves do not ask for help—neither those who are in exile with their families, famished, and with starving and sick children, nor those who are being slowly but surely tortured to death in the prisons. They die without uttering a single cry for help, knowing why and for what they suffer. But we, who see these sufferings, and know about them, cannot remain unmoved.
But how to help them?
There are only two means to help people persecuted for faith's sake. One consists in the fulfilment of the Christian commandment, to welcome the stranger, clothe the naked, visit the sick and imprisoned, and feed the hungry, which is prescribed to us both by our own hearts and by the Gospel; the other consists in appealing to the persecutors, both to those who prescribe the persecutions and to those who allow them to take place when they might stop them; and also to those who, without sympathising with the persecutions, participate in them and become their means,—appealing by laying
by the most irrefragable proofs, destroying the whole of the monstrous libels against the Spirit-Wrestlers contained in such statements as the "Confidential Report of Prince Shervashidze, Governor of Tiflis, to General Sheremetieff, the Viceroy of the Caucasus," extracts from which have appeared also in the papers. We keep the whole of the material carefully collected by us, from which the absolute accuracy of our statements may be verified. (Note in the original Appeal.)
