Category: Book Reviews

The Coffee House of Surat by Leo Tolstoy

In “The Coffee-House of Surrat”, Tolstoy tells the story of a group of people in a coffee house, who overhear a theologian speaking to his slave. “Tell me, wretched slave,” said he, “do you think there is a God, or not?”

Various individuals from different religions, who are in the coffee shop, enter the conversation. It is the Chinaman who ends the dispute.

Spoiler Alert: I am going to reveal the response given by the Chinaman. However, reading the response without reading the story will profit you nothing. Reading the story brings the fullness of understanding the Chinaman’s response.

“So on matters of faith,” continued the Chinaman, the student of Confuscious, “it is pride that causes error and discord among men. As with the sun, so it is with God. Each man wants to have a special God of his own, or at least a special God for his native land. Each nation wishes to confine in its own temples Him, who the world cannot contain.

“Can any temple compare with that which God Himself has built to unite all men in one faith and one religion?

“All human temples are built on the model of this temple, which is God’s own world. Every temple has its fonts, its vaulted roof, its lamps, its pictures or sculptures, its inscriptions, its books of the law, its offerings, its altars and its priests. But in what temple is there such a font as the ocean; such a vault as that of the heavens; such lamps as the sun, moon, and stars; or any figures to be compared with the living, loving, mutually-helpful men? Where are there any records of God’s goodness so easy to understand as the blessings which God has strewn abroad for man’s happiness? Where is there any book of the law so clear to each man as that written in his heart? What sacrifices equal the self-denials which loving men and women make for one another? And what altar can be compared with the heart of a good man, on which God Himself accepts the sacrifice?

“The higher a man’s conception of God, the better will he know Him. And the better he knows God, the nearer will He draw to Him, imitating His goodness, His mercy and His love of man.

“Therefore, let him who sees the sun’s whole light filling the world, refrain from blaming or despising the superstitious man, who in his own idol sees one ray of that same light. Let him not despise even the unbeliever who is blind and cannot see the sun at all” (Tolstoy).

Tolstoy, Leo. “The Coffee-House of Surat.”

© 2025 Angela Hormberg