By F. C. BURKITT The Books of the Prophets constitute the most original and influential contribution of Israel to religion. At the highest point, in Jeremiah, we find personal religion, consciously articulate and not dependent on national cult, yet this personal relation of the individual to God did not issue in the decay of national worship: it was used to purify and strengthen that worship. The nation itself adopted the utterances of the Prophets, and as Matthew Arnold so