diff --git a/activeresource/lib/active_resource/base.rb b/activeresource/lib/active_resource/base.rb
index 40a50201a7..56c6dc172b 100644
--- a/activeresource/lib/active_resource/base.rb
+++ b/activeresource/lib/active_resource/base.rb
@@ -134,7 +134,7 @@ module ActiveResource
     # Manually load attributes from a hash. Recursively loads collections of
     # resources.
     def load(attributes)
-      return self if attributes.nil?
+      raise ArgumentError, "expected an attributes Hash, got #{attributes.inspect}" unless attributes.is_a?(Hash)
       attributes.each do |key, value|
         @attributes[key.to_s] =
           case value
diff --git a/activeresource/test/base/load_test.rb b/activeresource/test/base/load_test.rb
index 726e7100b7..97faebc143 100644
--- a/activeresource/test/base/load_test.rb
+++ b/activeresource/test/base/load_test.rb
@@ -14,10 +14,9 @@ class BaseLoadTest < Test::Unit::TestCase
     @person = Person.new
   end
 
-  def test_load_nil
-    assert_nothing_raised do
-      assert_equal @person, @person.load(nil)
-    end
+  def test_load_expects_hash
+    assert_raise(ArgumentError) { @person.load nil }
+    assert_raise(ArgumentError) { @person.load '<person id="1"/>' }
   end
 
   def test_load_simple_hash