66 Preface وَإِنَّ لَكُم فِي الأَنعامِ لَعِبرَةً ۖ نُسقيكُم مِمّا في بُطونِهِ مِن بَينِ فَرثٍ وَدَمٍ لَبَنًا خالِصًا سائِغًا لِلشّارِبينَYusuf AliAnd verily in cattle (too) will ye find an instructive sign.1 From what is within their bodies,2 between excretions and blood,3 We produce, for your drink, milk, pure and agreeable to those who drink it. The spiritual sustenance which God gives is typified by the wonderful ways of sustenance in the physical world, which figure forth God’s providence and loving care for His creation. And the wonderful transformation in the physical world, which all tend to the benefit of man, are also signs of His supreme wisdom. In the previous verse rain was mentioned, which gives new life to dead nature. In this and the following two verses our attention is drawn to milk, the products of the date and the vine, and honey (Cf. 36:11-73).Their, in the Arabic, it is “its”, in the singular number, for two reasons: (1) catde is the generic plural, and may be treated as a singular noun; (2) the instructive sign is in cattle collectively, but the milk is the product of each single individual.Milk is a secretion in the female body, like other secretions, but more specialised. Is it not wonderful that the same food, eaten by males and females, produces in the latter, when they have young, the wholesome and complete food, known as milk? Then, when cattle are tamed and specially bred for milk, the supply of milk is vastly greater than is necessary for their young and lasts for a longer time than during the period they give suck to their young. And it is a wholesome and agreeable diet for man. It is pure, as typified by its whiteness. Yet it is a secretion like other secretions, between the excretions which the body rejects as worthless and the precious blood-stream which circulates within the body and is the symbol of life itself to the animal which produces it.