WILLIAM H. FISHBURN 
 
 (Price Ten Cents) 
 
Red Blood Is Red 
 
 <:>♦<::> 
 
 By 
 REV. WILLIAM H. FISHBURN, D.D. 
 
 A Sermon Delivered in West Adams Presbyterian 
 
 Church, Los Angeles, California, 
 
 April 28, 1918 
 
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 Published by order of the Session. 
 
Red Blood Is Red 
 
 Matt. 17:20, "If ye have faith as a 
 grain of mustard seed, ye shall say unto 
 this mountain, Remove hence! 
 And it shall remove." 
 
 As some persons interpret these words of 
 Jesus, they must seem like the veriest undi- 
 luted nonsense. "Ye shall say unto this moun- 
 tain, 'Remove hence!' and it shall remove." 
 
 Walk to your door and command Mt. Lowe 
 to remove. Charge Mt. Wilson to vanish. Or- 
 der the Sierra Madre range to disappear. Will 
 they go? They will not! 
 
 The kind of Faith that would look calmly 
 out of its door and issue orders to the moun- 
 tains would never make them go, but the Faith 
 that makes plans and prepares blue-prints and 
 uses spades and pick-axes and blasting powder 
 will remove mountains. 
 
 Our Lord is not thinking about mountains 
 of clay and rock and gravel. Anybody with 
 the tools of labor can remove that sort of 
 mountain. He is thinking about mountains of 
 evil ; mountains of obstruction that get in the 
 path of every forward-looking person ; moun- 
 tains of difficulty; mountains of tragedy that 
 strike through human lives, and the like, — 
 they are the mountains that can be moved out 
 of the way by nothing but a giant faith, a 
 masterful, red-blooded faith, a faith that be- 
 lieves in God and translates its belief into 
 work. 
 
 Jesus is not calling attention to the little- 
 
ness of the mustard seed ; He is calling at- 
 tention to the immense power that resides in 
 it in spite of its littleness. He does not say, 
 '*If ye have faith as a grain of sand," or "If 
 ye have faith as a grain of dust." They are 
 lifeless. The mustard seed is alive. 
 
 Maybe, if we had a microscope of greater 
 magnifying power, we might look into that 
 little speck of a thing called a mustard seed 
 and see a living pulse beating in the very cen- 
 ter of it. Every molecule, every atom within 
 this tiny shell works, works mightily, works 
 harmoniously. Somewhere within it is life, 
 potent, unconquerable life, life that will burst 
 through this husk and multiply itself a thou- 
 sand-fold. 
 
 The mustard seed is a little vegetable dy- 
 namo, packed from center to circumference 
 with power. And faith, the kind of faith that 
 our Lord says can remove mountains, turns a 
 man into a human dynamo. 
 
 Mountains to be removed by Faith,— there is 
 a chain of mountains stretching across Europe 
 and half way across Asiatic Russia, — moun- 
 tains of imperialism, mountains of tyranny, 
 mountains of oppression, mountains of brutal- 
 ity, — and all of them are going to be made 
 level with the ground in your time and mine, 
 and they are going to be leveled by Faith. But 
 it is the kind of faith that resides in the mus- 
 tard seed, living faith, vital faith, — faith of the 
 kind that builds ships, and airplanes, and can- 
 non, and machine guns, and rifles, — that 
 forges swords and bayonets, — that sends forth 
 man-power, — faith that is going to win be- 
 cause it believes and lives its faith in its life. 
 
 Some of you have a wrong mental picture 
 of faith. You think of it as a quiet man sit- 
 
 4 
 
ting in a cushioned chair and getting things 
 done because he hopes and expects and waits. 
 That is not faith. That is religious laziness. 
 Faith is a man clad in war-harness, squared 
 jaw, head down, teeth set, going over the top 
 with fixed bayonet, — fighting for the rights of 
 man, — ready to give his blood for the rights 
 of man. That is faith. That is the faith that 
 removes mountains. 
 
 A great many of our artists have confound- 
 ed faith with trust. They portray faith as 
 tranquility. Faith is not tranquility ; it is trust 
 that is tranquility. You have seen that fine 
 engraving of a little child kneeling beside a 
 crib, uplifted eyes, folded hands, a beam of 
 morning sunshine illuminating the sweet face, 
 — and the picture is called **Faith." That is 
 not faith ; it is trust. 
 
 A picture of real faith is Jacob, there in 
 the dark by the brook Jabbok, wrestling 
 through the long night with a mighty angel, 
 wrestling until his thews and sinews snap and 
 his bones are out of joint. A picture of real 
 faith is the strong Christ bowed there in the 
 Garden of Gethsemane, bowed all along upon 
 the ground, praying, praying, praying to the 
 Father until His sweat is like great drops of 
 blood falling down to the ground. 
 
 Faith and Trust must not be confounded. 
 Faith is no more like Trust than nitroglycerin 
 is like oil of roses ; than a naked sword is like 
 an olive branch; than an eagle is like a dove. 
 Faith is alive. Faith without works is dead. 
 So is a clock. So is a watch. A clock or a 
 watch without works is dead. Faith without 
 works is dead. Faith, the kind of faith that 
 our Lord Jesus taught earnest men to have, 
 is the thing that makes all other things go. 
 
We Americans are a people at war. We 
 are facing the mountains of Kaiserism which 
 is Prussianism which is diabolism, — and com- 
 manding it in God's name to go, — to be cast 
 into the midst of the sea. But it is not going 
 to go because we talk to it or write letters to 
 it or issue order to it, but only because we 
 smite it and pierce it and stab it and wound it 
 with a sword that drips blood at every stroke 
 and every thrust. 
 
 The Sword of Faith is a red sword. It is a 
 sword that draws blood. "Without shedding 
 of blood," says this Book, ''there is no re- 
 mission." Everything we win we win with 
 the precious coin of blood drops. The only 
 money that has purchased our progress, our 
 civilization, our growth upward and God-ward, 
 is the red money that comes out of the veins 
 of living men. Faith means the shedding of 
 blood. To convince yourself of that, read the 
 Faith Chapter, the 11th of Hebrews, and see 
 how that chapter runs red with the blood of 
 heroes, — men and women, — whose deeds God 
 has put on the tablets of everlasting remem- 
 brance. 
 
 Faith does not mean just "standing fast;" 
 it means doing things. To stand fast in one 
 place is not enough. You must be "carrying 
 on." The boy Casabianca stood, "stood fast" 
 on the burning deck, and then there was a 
 loud noise and "the boy, Oh, where was he?" 
 
 Our Lord Jesus did not just stand fast. He 
 moved. He went into peril. He faced angry 
 men. He spoke the truth to men's faces in 
 words that stung like a whiplash of fire. 
 
 I wish from the heart of me that no artist 
 had ever attempted to paint a picture of Jesus. 
 Jesus was not like the gentle and velvety pic- 
 
 6 
 
tures represent Him to have been. He was a 
 majestic Man. He made sacrifices. He was 
 ready to die for what He believed. He did 
 die for what He believed. 
 
 Sirs, you must not imagine that Jesus went 
 tip-toeing through the world softly and gently 
 lest He wake somebody up. He woke every- 
 body up. He was the Lion of the Tribe of 
 Judah. He was the strongest figure that ever 
 walked through human history. His master- 
 ful presence drove bargaining Jews out of 
 the temple and with His strong hand He over- 
 turned their money-tables and scattered their 
 treasured coins on the marble floor. His up- 
 lifted hand turned back the mob on the night 
 of the betrayal and they fell before Him with 
 their lips in the dust. Jesus is strong! He 
 is the Man ! He is mighty ! He is the Mas- 
 ter ! He is the center of our Faith. Looking 
 at Him, imitating Him, we become possessed 
 of the faith that removes mountains. 
 
 Walk beside Jesus and He will not take 
 you through the easy places, He will lead 
 you through the hard places, through the dan- 
 gerous places, through the places of pain and 
 sadness, through the places of storm and bat- 
 tle, — He went through all of them Himself. — 
 but He will be beside you all the time, the 
 Strong Son of God, to shield you and to lead 
 you safe through into the Great Light! 
 
 You cannot remove mountains by sitting in 
 your parlor in a rocking chair and trying to 
 think them out of existence. You cannot say 
 a form of words over them like the presti- 
 digitators do: ''Exi! Exi! hocus pocus! Abra- 
 cadabra !" and expect them to go. Jesus never 
 taught that the kind of faith that would re- 
 move mountains was of the type that would 
 
 7 
 
make you cozy and comfortable. He taught 
 that His kind of faith would lead you into 
 life's hard battles, but it would give you joy, 
 the joy of conquest, the joy of final victory. 
 
 We have a hymn that says : 
 "Must I be carried to the skies 
 
 On flowery beds of ease, 
 While others fought to win the prize, 
 
 And sailed through bloody seas?" 
 
 There are those who sing that hymn as 
 though they scorned all thought of ease, and 
 then, immediately after, close the hymn book 
 and go out and live the sort of life that proves 
 that they want to get to heaven in the easiest 
 way, without any toil or any blood or any sac- 
 rifice. 
 
 They will tell you that they feel safe; that 
 they have so much faith in God that they are 
 sure everything is going to come out all right ; 
 and that the mountain of Kaiserism is going 
 to be removed ; and that you mustn't worry 
 about it ; and that everything is going to be 
 just perfectly lovely. 
 
 To feel safe in the hours through which we 
 are now passing is not a display of faith in 
 God ; it is a display of foolhardiness ; it is a 
 display of credulity. We have been safe up 
 to this moment from the direct attacks of the 
 Huns not on account of our foolhardy faith, 
 but on account of Great Britain's wall of steel 
 battleships. And those who feel safe just 
 now are dreaming a fool's dream; are living 
 in an idiot's paradise. 
 
 Doubtless some of these persons are pious; 
 but the presence of piety in a heart does not 
 prove that one has good common sense. I 
 have known persons who seemed to me to be 
 
as righteous as Abraham, who did not possess 
 the brains of a rabbit. 
 
 The opposite of faith is not doubt. Doubt 
 is a passive thing. The opposite of faith is 
 unbelief. Unbelief is an active thing. 
 
 If you have lived through the past four 
 years without any doubts, without walking 
 out at night under the stars and having your 
 mind torn and rent with doubt, without being 
 stunned and dizzy now and then with doubt, 
 — it is not a sign that you have strong faith, 
 rt is a sign that you do not possess a reason- 
 ing sense. But real faith, the faith that is able 
 to remove mountains, seizes the doubts and 
 fights them and overcomes them and looks 
 past them to God, and then goes on battling 
 and believing in spite of the doubts. 
 
 Keep it in your minds, sirs, that faith is 
 not a virtue of the pacifist, of the slacker. 
 Faith does not make the pacifist and the 
 slacker what they are. The lack of a spinal 
 column makes them what they are. 
 
 An enterprising butcher had an advertise- 
 ment in your paper yesterday, "Backbones, 
 17 cents." His store ought to have been 
 crowded to the walls by the pacifists and the 
 slackers. 
 
 People with pink tea in their veins, people 
 who are afraid to fight and then blame it on 
 their religion, people with thin, watery blood, 
 must not think of thesmselves as red-blood 
 people. 
 
 Real red blood is red, it is never pacifist; it 
 is never neutral ; it is never watery and thin ; 
 it is red ; it is vital ; it is alive. 
 
 It is your good fortune, my people, and 
 mine, to be citizens of the United States of 
 
America, a great Republic. A Republican form 
 of Government is the highest form of Govern- 
 ment ever devised by man, but it can really 
 govern none but the highest form of people. 
 A Republic has no machinery to strike back 
 at the pacifist and slacker and the spy and the 
 traitor. A Republic is slow ; it is patient ; it 
 waits. Mr. Daniels, Secretary of the Navy, 
 at the Governor's meeting in Washington on 
 April 7th, said : ''The greatest criticism heard 
 is against the timorous attitude of our Na- 
 tional Government towards treason.'' Speak- 
 ing of the slackers and the spies, he said : "We 
 will put the fear of God into the hearts of 
 those who live among us and fatten upon us, 
 and are not Americans." 
 
 Now I am sure that we will not go on for- 
 ever permitting the Hun sympathizers to 
 launch their Red Rhetoric at the United 
 States, and then punish them by giving them 
 a nice place to sleep and plenty to eat in the 
 internment stockades at the expense of our 
 loyal people. When agitators have defied 
 American public opinion too far, American 
 sentiment will kill them like the lightning and 
 wreck them like the tempest. 
 
 Our splendid American boys who have gone 
 to the front and who are going to the front, — 
 God has endowed them with the Faith that is 
 vital, the Faith that throbs with life, the Faith 
 that will cast the mountains into the sea. We 
 are proud of them. We believe in them. We 
 glory in them. 
 
 But, too, we are proud of the men of Europe 
 who are our associates in this war. We are 
 proud of the Italians fighting on the frozen 
 heights, fighting in the snow. We are proud 
 of the British. 
 
 10 
 
Some persons used to say sneeringly, "The 
 British do not fight ; they get everybody else 
 to do their fighting." But, looking at Sir 
 Douglas Haig and his magnificent Britons 
 standing with their backs to the wall, aided by 
 Canadians and Australians and South Africans 
 and New Zealanders ; — looking at the Scottish 
 regiments from the hills, whom the Huns call 
 the 'Xadies from Hell," on account of their 
 kilts, — we feel that the British are bone of our 
 bone and flesh of our flesh, and worthy of ev- 
 ery tribute our lips can speak. 
 
 And the French ! Mr. Harvey in his *'War 
 Weekly" says: ''France scarcely speaks. She 
 is too busy fighting!" 
 
 "France, that divine marvel, mystery, mir- 
 acle among the nations, — France, the voluble, 
 the volatile, the mercurial, the capricious, — 
 France gives no sign of her martyrized dis- 
 tress." 
 
 "Bleeding at every pore, burdened beyond 
 all credence of endurance, she sets her face as 
 a flint and her heart as adamant, and has no 
 word of complaint, no word of repining, no 
 word of reproach, — no word save the grim 
 growl beneath her sobbing breath : "They 
 shall not pass !" These are the men out of the 
 nations that with the help of American boys 
 will remove the mountain. 
 
 We, as Americans, do not want to take from 
 the Hun anything that of right belongs to the 
 Hun. We do not want his house, nor his wife, 
 nor his man-servant, nor his maid-servant, nor 
 his ox, nor his ass, nor anything that is his. 
 But we want decency. We want the right to 
 live righteously and justly and soberly before 
 God. 
 
 We want to chase out of the world the most 
 11 
 
debased being who ever polluted the atmos- 
 phere of this planet by inhaling it. 
 
 This is not a war. It is a tiger-hunt. We 
 are striking at man-eating tigers. When we 
 have destroyed Prussianism we shall have de- 
 stroyed the most direful evil in all human 
 time. Wasn't it Napoleon Bonaparte who 
 used to say : "Prussia was hatched from a 
 cannon ball?" 
 
 America is in this war. She dared not stand 
 neutral any longer. Maybe she stood neu- 
 tral too long. Assuredly had not America 
 put her hand to the sword, the very paving- 
 stones in the streets would have cried out 
 against her. 
 
 Do you know how great is the crisis at this 
 moment? Are you reading the books that 
 tell you the truth about the war? Mr. Curtin's 
 book, **The Land of Deepening Shadow," a 
 terrible and pitiful book, shows you the real 
 Germany, the Germany of fact and not of fic- 
 tion, the Hun with his mask stripped off, 
 showing him as he is; "The Crime," one of 
 the most able books of the war, written by a 
 German, against Germany. Only the first vol- 
 ume of ''The Crime" has issued from the press. 
 A second volume is to follow. 
 
 "Private Peet — Two Years in Hell and Back 
 With a Smile," — a book that will keep you up 
 after your bedtime hour. 
 
 "German Atrocities," by Newell Dwight 
 Hillis, a book that will send your blood ham- 
 mering through your veins like liquid fire. 
 
 Read all of these books if you have the time, 
 read some of them if you lose a few hours of 
 sleep, and you will feel that the Republican- 
 ism of America is needed just now in the 
 12 
 
World and that our flag with its Stars and 
 Stripes needs to mingle its colors with the 
 other flags of World-freedom to remove the 
 mountain of tyranny and brutality from the 
 earth forever and forever. 
 
 "There is something in our Flag 
 
 And the little burnished Eagle 
 That is more than emblematic; 
 
 Something glorious and regal. 
 If that flag goes down to ruin, 
 
 Time will then, without a warning, 
 Turn the dial back to midnight, 
 
 And the world must wait till morning." 
 
 Our church is one out of three hundred 
 churches in Los Angeles which has been asked 
 to hold a patriotic service either at the hour 
 of morning or of evening worship. Three 
 hundred ministers in Los Angeles are sup- 
 posed to be standing up in their pulpits today 
 and making a drive for Liberty Bonds. It has 
 been found necessary to help to awaken the 
 people through appeals from the platform. 
 
 There are persons in our city who cannot 
 subscribe for Liberty Bonds, — invalids who 
 are unable to win their daily bread ; aged per- 
 sons who are living on an annuity that is so 
 narrow that they are next door to want; per- 
 sons whose occupation is taken from them by 
 the stoppage of work in their departments. 
 But there are persons who fail to contribute 
 from sheer indifference ; some who fail be- 
 cause of the insane love of money; some who 
 fail because they see in such a contribution a 
 great sacrifice. 
 
 Sacrifice? What do you call a sacrifice? 
 What have they given, those fifty-eight be- 
 loved boys, whose stars are on our Service 
 
 13 
 
Flag? They have offered their lives as a sac- 
 rifice. For us, for the saving of our nation, 
 they will march undaunted into the roaring 
 red flame of war! 
 
 Sacrifice? What do you call a sacrifice? 
 What have their dear ones given who have 
 seen these boys march away in their beautiful 
 young manhood — appointed to death in the 
 Great Finger beckon? 
 
 Do we who have given only money, who 
 have even given largely of money, do we re- 
 alize what is meant by sacrifice? 
 
 If you were in England today, sir, you 
 would not be asked to buy a Liberty Bond. 
 Thirty per cent of your income would be 
 taken out of your hand in war tax — thirty dol- 
 lars out of every one hundred dollars of in- 
 come; with an income of two thousand dol- 
 lars your tax bill would be six hundred dol- 
 lars. England would not ask you for it. Eng- 
 land would take it and not say ''thank you." 
 That may come to pass in the United States. 
 Our Government has the right to compel us 
 to give. 
 
 They told me at Liberty Loan headquar- 
 ters yeterday of a calculation made by Mr. 
 Leslie Henry, one of the speakers. He fig- 
 ured it out that if a man of substance is ac- 
 customed to getting seven per cent on his in- 
 vestments, he receives seventy dollars on the 
 investment of one thousand dollars. In buy- 
 ing four and one-quarter per cent Liberty 
 Bonds, he loses $27.50 on each one thousand 
 dollars he withdraws from a seven per cent 
 investment. 
 
 Now, consider the enlisted boy. The aver- 
 age monthly earnings of the boy of war age 
 
 14 
 
is $65.00. The boy enlists for thirty dollars 
 per month. He gives to the Government thir- 
 ty-five dollars per month, besides risking his 
 life. That is four hundred and twenty dollars 
 per year given to the Government by the boy. 
 It would be necessary for the man of sub- 
 stance to buy fourteen thousand dollars worth 
 of Liberty Bonds before he has equaled the 
 money gift of every enlisted boy, besides the 
 fact, that, as Mr. Henry phrased it, "He saves 
 his hide by staying at home." 
 
 I wish you could understand that we are 
 not giving when we buy Liberty Bonds; we 
 are making a loan to our Government. We 
 still have the money after we buy the Bond, 
 and the Government pays us for the use of it. 
 Here is a tin box with a slot in it. You put 
 one hundred dollars through the slot, and 
 leave it alone for one year. Touch a button 
 at the end of the year and seventeen twenty- 
 five cent pieces drop out into your hand — and 
 you still have your original one hundred dol- 
 lars while the United States Government has 
 the use of it. 
 
 I believe in this war as a Holy War be- 
 cause we are battling for cleanness and de- 
 cency and the sacred rights of mankind. The 
 Lord of Hosts is with us. 
 
 No one can tell us when this war will end. 
 Former President Taft said a week ago: *T 
 am in favor of amending the draft law so that 
 we can raise an army of five millions of men 
 or six millions of men in two years ;" and he 
 added : "We won't win until this nation is a 
 house of mourning. We will have to go down 
 into the valley of the shadow of death, but 
 the result will be worth the cost." 
 15 
 
I have my own convictions that we are des- 
 tined to win this war. I feel certain that our 
 own soldier-boys will never cease their on- 
 ward drive until their triumphal cheers ring 
 and echo over the homes and castles and pal- 
 aces and cathedrals of Berlin, and, led by the 
 martial mus4c of the nations, they march be- 
 hind the Stars and Stripes and the other Vic- 
 tory banners through the avenues and streets 
 of the captured city. 
 
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