We find that he and his wife read together two religious books: The Plain Man's Pathway to Heaven and Bishop Bayley's Practice of Piety. Would such books, so read, make no impression upon his impressionable mind?
We find that he was drawn to go to church. That he was "over-run with the spirit of superstition." Would that affect him naught?
We find that his neighbours at last took him "to a very godly man, a new and religious man, and did much marvel to see such a great and famous alteration in my life and manners."
Beyond this we need not go. The religious soldiers of Cromwell, the pious books and the pious wife, the spirit of superstition, and the godly man, were all parts of John Bunyan's environment, and, acting upon the peculiar nature given to him by heredity, these and other facts of his environment lifted him up, made him what we know, and enabled him to write his glorious book. Instead of a man who rose above his environment we have in Bunyan a man who was led by one kind of environment to gamble and drink and blaspheme, and by another kind of environment was made into a fanatical religious enthusiast.
John Bunyan was John Bunyan when he played tipcat, and used profane language on the Sabbath. Up to that time the "manhood that was in him" had not saved John Bunyan.
If, as Mr. Campbell suggests, it is the inherent manhood that saves a man, how was it that Bunyan's manhood, up to a certain point in his life, failed to raise him above his environment.
And, when the change came, what was it that brought that change about? Bunyan had only the same manhood: the same manhood which had already been defeated by the environment. How was it that same manhood now served to raise him above the environment?
John Bunyan was the same John Bunyan; it was the environment that changed. It was the pious Ironsides, the pious wife, the godly man, the atmosphere of superstition, that made John Bunyan the profane tinker into John Bunyan the man of religion.
Bad environment got John Bunyan down: there is no doubt of that. Good environment lifted him up. The manhood was the same at both periods. It was the environment that changed.
If ever there was an example of the power of environment to save or sink a man, that example is John Bunyan, tinker and poet.