Verse 15 We shall not be surprised at the indications of great interest and solicitude, on the part of the apostle, manifest in all that he says in this and in the preceding chapter, in respect to this contribution, when we consider that, in endeavoring to accomplish such a measure, he was carrying out the principles of Christianity into an entirely new and untried field. At the present age of the world, and in Christian lands, we cannot well appreciate the novelty and boldness of such an undertaking as the attempt, at that day, to induce an extended and continued contribution of money, from the middle and lower classes of society, to raise a fund for the relief of sufferers perhaps a thousand miles remote from them, and whom they had never seen; and to combine, too, for this purpose, two distant provinces, having no connection with each other whatever, except the bonds of a spiritual sympathy. These contributions for the distressed Christians at Jerusalem (compare Acts 11:29,30) were demonstrating the power of Christianity to produce results which the world had never witnessed before, and successful as they were, they became the germ and the beginning of the great principle of organized and combined benevolence, which has since, in every age, been one of the most marked and striking characteristics of Christianity.