One of the duties of the office of President of this Society, to which you did me the honor to elect me for the year that has just closed, is to give an annual address. Its theme is, fortunately for the speaker, almost of necessity prescribed by the purposes of the Society and the nature of the office to which your kindness has chosen me, and he deems it, therefore, no less his duty than his privilege to bring before you in rapid survey, and in brief and inadequate outline, indeed, the principal events of the year which has elapsed since the last meeting of this Society, in so far as they relate themselves to its purpose, viz., the cultivation of church history.