‘Our brethren in Norway,’ said Palladius, bishop of Zealand, ‘are like sheep that have no shepherd.’[369] Nevertheless, one or two influential men of the country took part in the work of reform. Johan Reff, bishop of Opzloe, went to Copenhagen, and there resigned his temporal power and accepted the new constitution of the Church. Geble Petersen, bishop of Bergen, also declared publicly for the Reformation. He refused to marry, he said, in order that he might be able to devote himself entirely to the public service. He gave up his whole fortune towards the foundation of a school, the repair of his cathedral, and the erection of a parsonage-house. He gave instruction daily in the school which he had founded, and urgently requested Palladius, bishop of Zealand, who held him in high esteem, to send him masters and ministers; but he did not succeed in getting them. The fervent Catholicism of certain Norwegians was alarming to the Danes. It was rumored at Copenhagen that in Norway people were killing the pastors. The constitution of the Danish Church was, however, introduced into the country. Christian III. commanded that the Word of God should be purely and plainly taught there. But there was an active party which offered a vigorous opposition to Protestantism. A gale was blowing in the country districts which threw to the ground whatever the Government attempted to set up. The monks were stirring up the peasantry to revolt. The people when urged to build parsonage-houses for their pastors refused to do so. Nevertheless the Reformation gradually got the ascendency; but it appears to have been mainly the work of the Government.[370] We have already spoken of the Reformation in the duchies of Schleswig and Holstein.[371] The townsmen of Flensborg, in 1526, discharged twelve priests and set evangelical ministers in their places. In the same and the following years the Reformation was established at Hadersleben, Schleswig, Itzehoe, Rendsburg, Kiel, Oldenburg, and other towns. All the measures of the Government were marked by mildness and patience; and the kingdom of Christ made progress by its own inward power. [Sidenote: The Bishops Of Iceland.] Iceland, that island of frozen mountains and subterranean fires which heave up and shake the land, and then burst forth in eruptions, so that the region is a wonderful combination of burning lava and eternal ice—Iceland also was to become acquainted with the Reformation. Icebergs floating down from the polar regions sometimes environ it and destroy the crops; but knowledge, Divine words, and evangelical teachers were one day to arrive there from the East; and this remote island of the North was thus to be exposed to the beneficent shining of a sun which brings life and prosperity into the most desolate regions.