Our Savior, also, sanctions this idea in the text.  Joining His disciples again, after their brief separation, He finds them elated and exultant.  They rejoiced, and, apparently, not with modesty, that devils were subject unto them, and that they could exorcize them at their pleasure.  While they acknowledged that their power was due to the influence of His name, they evidently thought more of themselves than of Him.  They were given to unseemly glorifying and self-satisfaction, and were met by the Master’s words—­half warning, half rebuke—­“I beheld Satan, as lightning, fall from heaven.”  He thus identifies their pride with that evil spirit which led to angelic ruin, and seeks to banish it from their hearts:  “Rejoice not that the demons are subject unto you, but, rather, rejoice because your names are written in heaven.”  Rejoice not on account of privilege and power, but on account of grace; for the memory of grace must promote humility, as it will recall the guilt of which it is the remedy.

We have, here, a lesson for all ages and for all classes of society—­a lesson continually enforced by Scripture, and illustrated by history.  It deals with the insanity of pride and the senselessness of egotism.  It reminds us, by repeated examples, of the temptations to self-inflation, and of the perils which assail its indulgence.  “Ye shall be as gods,” was the smiling, sarcastic allurement which beguiled our first parents to their ruin.  They thought that before them rose an eminence which the foot of creaturehood had never trodden; that from its height the adventurous climber would rival Deity in the sweep of his knowledge and the depth of his joy.  Elated and dazzled by the prospect, they dared tread through sin to its attainment, vainly dreaming that wrong-doing would lead to a purer paradise and to a loftier throne.  One step, and only one, in the gratification of their desires, converted their enchanting mountain into a yawning gulf, and in its horrid wastes of darkness and of sorrow their high-blown pride was shamed and smothered.  The haughty king walked on the terrace heights of Babylon, and, beneath the calm splendor of an Assyrian sky, voiced the complacent feeling which dulled his sense of dependence upon God—­as the perfumes of the East lull into waking-slumber the faculties of the soul.  Thus ran his self-glorifying soliloquy:  “Is not this great Babylon that I have built for the house of the kingdom by the might of my power, and for the honor of my majesty?” Alas for the weakness of the royal egotist!  In an hour his boasting was at an end, and, reduced by the chastening judgment of the Almighty to the level of the brute creation, he was compelled to learn that “those who walk in pride the King of heaven is able to abase.”  Similar the lesson taught us by the overthrow of Belshazzar when, congratulating himself on the stability of his throne, and in his excess of arrogance, he insulted the sacred vessels which his father had plundered