Professor J. H. Wright delivered an address at Holden Chapel last night, speaking of the early Christian church and of the outside influences which operated upon it.

The early church, he said, owed its splendid organization, its magnificent hierarchy to Rome; but all that was permanently vital and formative came from Greece. When Christianity was still young, the strong literary spirit of the Greeks had a decided effect on it. Thus their elegant rhetoric soon put an end to the spontaneous prophesying which was common in the first days of the church, and made way for the preaching of modern times. It used to be thought that the Christian church was an entirely new phenomenon; but this is far from true. It is only unique in its idea of Christ. In fact, irreverant though it may seem to admit it, Christianity is indebted to pagan ideas for a number of our religious ceremonies.

There have, of late years, been some very interesting and important discoveries in early religious literature, among them the Apology of Aristides and the Gospel of St. Peter. Investigation has shown that the substance of the Apology is contained in an old story which is still preserved; and this leads us to believe that there may be still other pieces of earlier literature incorporated in the writings of modern days. We know certainly that the Gospel of St Peter was written about 120 A. D., and it contains many quotations from the other four Gospels with which we are familiar; thus proving them to belong to a period nearer the time of Christ than has been previously supposed, and making them more reliable as a record of His life.