It would be well for our present purpose to treat the question from a position, whether real or assumed, of absolute detachment from any particular religious belief, and from any special religious community.

Looked at even from such a detached position, it appears that the first condition required to enable religious influence to be effectively exercised is to secure religious peace.

It is impossible to deny that there has been a kind of jealousy and hostility between those who hold different opinions about theological and ecclesiastical questions which injures the work of all.

Anyone, for example, who was in the habit of meeting educated Indians at the time of the Kikuyu controversy could not have helped noticing the harm done to the cause of the Christian religion by that controversy.

There were Indians, whose attitude to Christianity before might almost have been called wistful admiration, seeing the brighter hope and fuller life it opened to all classes, and the universal brotherhood of men which it proclaimed, who then spoke in an altered tone, and their feeling seemed to be tinged with a half-concealed and almost contemptuous pity.