It takes a great deal of Christianity to wipe out uncivilized Eastern instincts, such as falling in love at first sight.

The line is a characteristically Kiplingesque, ironic juxtaposition: “Christianity” is invoked not as spiritual doctrine but as a veneer of Western “civilization” meant to suppress supposedly “Eastern” impulses. The joke turns on the speaker’s mock-serious claim that romantic spontaneity—“falling in love at first sight”—is an “uncivilized” instinct requiring moral discipline to erase. Read critically, it also exposes the period’s colonial habit of stereotyping “East” and “West,” using cultural and religious language to police desire and behavior. The wit depends on that tension between professed refinement and the persistence of human passion.