T. C. Smout described it as the ‘first Scottish oral history project’: the Revd William McCulloch (1691–1771) developed the manuscript upon which this edition is based as a collation of the testimonies that he had collected to demonstrate the authenticity of the spiritual experiences of individuals caught up in the ‘Cambuslang revival’ of 1742. The events of the revival, while appearing similar to those witnessed and described by McCulloch's American correspondent, Jonathan Edwards, were pushed to the centre of a dispute between Evangelicals in the Church of Scotland and others in the Secession Church. McCulloch's project in collecting the testimonies of converts was designed to settle this dispute, but they were never published. Nevertheless, his manuscript of conversion narratives has been used – though often selectively – in the popular historical accounts of the period. For the last thirty years, however, it has been mined more rigorously by scholars of early modern conversion narratives and religious revivals, including Hindmarsh, Schmidt, Crawford and Stout. Keith Edward Beebe's new edition of the manuscript, based on his University of Aberdeen doctoral thesis, presents a carefully edited and copiously annotated text, and is a most valuable addition to the primary sources of Scottish religious history and Evangelical studies.