[Sidenote: Advent.] For the season of Advent, violet ground, with red and white letters. [Sidenote: Lent.] For Lent, a warm or pinkish-grey ground, letters all white, with black edges. [Sidenote: Festivals.] Long scrolls for festivals have the best effect with white ground. Short scrolls look very handsome with gold letters upon red or blue ground. [Sidenote: Ground Tints.] The tint of the ground-colours must, in a great measure, depend upon the light in which they will be seen. In some cases crimson is preferable to scarlet, and the blue or violet, if placed in a dark part of the church, would require to be much paler than usual. _Symbolism of Colours._ [Sidenote: Isa. liv. II.] [Illustration: Behold, I will lay thy stones with fair colours.] I have ventured to prefix these sacred words to this part of my subject, in order to point out how manifestly the emblematic significance of colour has its foundation and authority in the Holy Scriptures. The fact is first brought to our notice in the inspired account of the making of the Tabernacle, under the Divine commands, and subsequently in the building of the Temple. The colours, numbers, and many other particulars of the Mosaic dispensation, were symbolical types--"a shadow of good things to come," long since fulfilled [Sidenote: Heb. x. 1.]; but the symbolical application of colours and other types of "heavenly things" is not therefore ended, inasmuch as they are largely so employed throughout the New Testament. These combined facts furnish an argument to my own mind most convincing, that we may, with all reverence, continue to regard colours symbolically, as types of heavenly attributes and virtues. Mrs. Jameson[12] says, "In very early art we find colours used in a symbolical or mystic sense, and until the ancient principles and traditions were wholly worn out of memory, or set aside by the later painters, certain colours were appropriate to certain subjects and personages, and could not arbitrarily be applied or misapplied. In the old specimens of stained glass, we find these significations scrupulously attended to." [12] In _The Poetry of Sacred and Legendary Art_. The precise tints of the colours mentioned in the Holy Scriptures must ever be a subject of doubt, but enough can be gathered from ancient writings to bring them within certain degrees of probability. In an interesting article in Dr. Kitto's _Cyclopædia of Biblical Literature_, we read:--"Josephus evidently takes the Hebrew word," translated "blue," "to mean 'sky-colour,' for, in explaining the colours of the vail of the Temple, and referring to the blue (Exod. xxvi. 31), he says that it represented the air or sky." We must not, however, be led away by our own modern term "sky-blue," which represents a pale colour, but recollect that (to quote again from Dr. Kitto) "in proportion as the sky is clear and serene, it assumes a dark appearance, which is still more observable in an eastern climate."