THE AGE OF DEPRESSION

When the nineteenth century dawned, Roman Catholic missions in India had reached a point of weakness almost amounting to inanition.

The devastation wrought by the suppression of the Society of Jesus has been described elsewhere. The depredations of Tipu Sultan and his armies had spread terror far and wide. The number of forced conversions to Islam had been considerable. Then came the deluge of the French Revolution. As one disaster after another fell on the church in France, recruitment for the missions almost ceased, and the number of those who actually reached India was far less than adequate to fill the places of those who for one reason or another had fallen out of the race.

In 1801 Napoleon, as First Consul, had considerably changed the situation by his concordat with the religious bodies; he was even prepared to tolerate the existence of a number of missionaries, regarding them as possibly valuable sources of information as to what was going on in distant lands. But the church of Napoleon was not the church of the ages; to him it was simply an instrument in the hands of government, useful insofar as it could serve purposes other than those for which it was called into being, but dependent at every point on the favour and goodwill of the authorities. It was hardly to be expected that spiritual renewal should come from such a church.