Just food for thought: I've been reading some of Spurgeon's sermons. He really doesn't pull his punches in this area:
"Ah! You do not know what death means. The demise of the bod is but a prelude to the perdition of the soul. The grave is but the porch of death; you will never understand the meaning of the terrible world till the Lord comes...But oh! The doom which is to be brought upon the wicked when Christ comes! This is a death which never dies. Here is a heart palpitating with eternal misery. Here is an eye never filmed by the kind finger or generous forgetfulness. Here will be a body never to be stiffened in apathy; never to be laid quietly in the grave, rid of keen pangs, wearing disease, and lingering wretchedness. To die, you say, is nature's kind release: it brings ease. It comes to a man, for this world at least, a farewell to his woes and griefs; but there shall be no ease, no rest, no pause in the destination of impenitent sounds. "Depart, ye cursed," shall ever ring along the endless aisles of eternity. The thunderbolt of that tremendous word shall follow the sinner in his perpetual flight from the presence of God; from its baleful influence he shall never be able to escape; no, never. A million years shall make not so much difference to the duration of his agony as a cup of water taken from the sea would to the volume of the ocean. No, when millions of years told a million times shall have rolled their fiery orbits over his poor tormented head, he shall be no nearer to the end than he was at first. Talk of death! I might even paint him as an angel when once I think of the terrors of the wrath to come...But eternity, eternity, eternity, who shall measure its wounds, who shall fathom the depths of the gashes? When eternity wields the whip, how dreadfully will it fall! When eternity grasps the sword, how deep shall be the woundings, how terrible it's killings!...For him no more the pleasant landscape not the gliding stream. For him no more the light of the sun by day, nor the light of moon and stars by night. He has lost at one stroke every comfort and every hope...He has lost peace and immortality and the crown of life; no, he has lost all hope, and when a man has lost that, what remains to him? His spirit sinks with a terrible depression, more frightful than maniac ever knew in his wildest moods of grief. His soul sinks never to recover itself into the depths of dark despair, where not a ray of hope can ever reach him. Lost to God, lost to heaven, lost to time, lost to the preaching of the gospel; lost to the invitation of mercy; lost to the prayers of the gracious; lost to the mercy seat; lost to the blood of sprinkling; lost to all hope of every sort; lost, lost forever!"
("An Awful Premonition" - Delivered at the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington. No 594)
He paints a bleak picture indeed. He was a great and Biblical preacher Spurgeon...and I do believe that in light of what he's said here, and what scripture; Jesus Himself says of both hell and the second death...it should be a very great motivator for Christians to spread the gospel.
Really, mercy or not...I think that we can perhaps all agree that it's not the first choice? That heaven indeed is the best place, and that we wish all men would repent and receive grace?