“What is the difference between a state university and an ordinary university?” A rather silly question, perhaps; but the answer that came back, lightning-like, gave me the jolt of my life, and incidentally picked out in my mind the pattern for the community church. Here is the occasion and what took place: A reception for the distinguished regents of the University of Wisconsin at the home of the president. In due time I found myself approaching that awful reception line, terrifying, indeed, to me, a new-comer. Suddenly I became aware that I was shaking hands with the president, whose newness to the job of presiding over a university had not entirely worn off. It was up to me to say something, and so, after the manner of a pedagogue, I blurted out a question: “Mr. President, will you tell me the difference between a state university and an ordinary university?” President Van Hise didn’t hesitate an instant with his answer. “I cannot speak for all state universities,” said he, “but this university is run not for the students who happen to be here, but for the persons who may never see the university--even to the last man, woman, and child in the last community of the State.” I had become unconscious of the reception line, for I was startled with an idea foreign to my bringing up, and I must make sure that I perfectly understood. “Mr. President,” I interrupted, “do you mean to say that the University of Wisconsin is not proud of turning out highly developed personalities?” “Only as carriers,” President Van Hise quickly replied, in his characteristic jerky manner; “carriers of ideas and attitudes even to the isolated community and to the unpromising man. The students who are here are here, as it were, by accident. But the university is run for Wisconsin’s people at work.” I passed on down the line, and eventually out into a world strange to me, where being a “carrier” of intellectual goods to the “isolated community” and to the “last man” was an academic commonplace. Fourteen years of that day-by-day commonplace, however, never rubbed off the beauty of its bloom for me; for here was a university running at least neck and neck with church Christians in love for,--or duty to, if you prefer it so,--the Gospel’s whomsoever. Having seen with my own eyes these last communities of a State quickened into intellectual fervor through the devotion of university men and women, do you think I do not know what would happen to the spiritual life of these out-of-the-way communities if the supreme love of devoted church men and women were brought to bear upon them? _A Forecast Founded on Fact_