The Queen and the Virgins that Follow Her Heb. 6:9 THE writer has been describing, in very stern and solemn words, the fate of apostates, and illustrating it by the awful metaphor of ‘the earth which …, beareth thorns and briars,’ and which is, therefore, ‘rejected, and is nigh unto cursing, whose end is to be burned.’ Then he softens, and knowing that rebukes are never so pointed as when the arrow is feathered by love, he changes his voice. ‘But, beloved’—they needed to be assured that all the thundering