dwelling-place in the mountains.34

The bee is, with respect to its disposition and function, such a miracle of God’s power that a whole sura, Sura al-Nahl, has been named after it. For to inscribe in the minute head of that little honey-machine a complete programme for the fulfilment of its important task; to place in its diminutive stomach the most delicious of foods and to ripen it there; to place in its sting poison capable of destroying and killing animate beings, without causing any harm to its own body or the member in question — to do all this without the utmost care and knowledge, with exceeding wisdom and purposiveness, partakes of a perfect orderliness and equilibriium, and hence unconscious, disorderly, disequilibriated nature and accident could never interfere or participate in any of this.

The appearance and comprehensiveness of this Divine craft, this dominical deed, which is miraculous in three separate respects, in the countless bees that are found scattered over the earth, with the same wisdom, the same care, the same symmetry, at the same time and in the same fashion — this is a self-evident proof of God’s unity.

The Second Verse:

There is for you a lesson in cattle. From what is within their bodies, between excretions and blood, we produce for your drink, milk, pure and agreeable to those who drink it.35

This verse is a decree overflowing with useful instruction. To place in the nipples of cows, camels, goats and sheep, as well as human mothers, in the midst of blood and excrement but without being polluted by them, a substance the exact opposite, pure, clean, pleasant, nutritive and white milk, and to inspire in their hearts tenderness toward their young that is still more pleasant, sweeter and more valuable than milk — this requires such a degree of mercy, wisdom, knowledge, power, will and care that it cannot in any way be the work of turbulent chance, of the tangled elements, or of blind forces.

The manifestation, workings and comprehensiveness of so