The Lord's love is the sun of heaven, and it is natural for us to look above ourselves to the sun of this world in thinking about the Lord. It follows, then, that to be closer to the Lord we would climb into the highest places -- and indeed, people have been worshiping on mountains for ages. In fact, even steeples on modern churches are symbolic mountains. It makes sense, then, that a mountain in the Bible represents love to the Lord, the highest, purest love we human beings can experience. Mountains can also represent the desire for good that comes from the love of the Lord. Hills, meanwhile, represent a love of other people and a caring for them, and when "mountains" is used in the plural it generally represents both loves.

762. Spiritual temptations however are scarcely known nowadays, nor are they allowed to take place as they did in the past, because man is not governed by the truth of faith. If they did take place he would go under. Instead of temptations he undergoes other experiences, such as misfortune, grief, and anxiety which arise from natural or from bodily causes. There are also bodily illnesses and diseases, which to some extent weaken and break down the life of his pleasures and desires, and fix his thoughts on and raise them to higher and nobler things. But these are not spiritual temptations, which do not exist except among people who have received from the Lord a conscience for truth and good. Conscience itself is the level on which temptations take place.